Press Release „Review NAMUR Annual General Meeting 2022” was published

At the 85th NAMUR general meeting on November 10th and 11th, 2022, the focus this year was on the topic of safety. Almost 600 participants from the user groups of the process industry as well as invited guests from the manufacturers and partner organizations were able to find out which technological approach the sponsor HIMA came up with for the motto "Sustainable Lifecycle Risk Management".

After two years in online mode, the main meeting finally took place in person again. Dr. Felix Hanisch (Bayer) opened this year's event as Chairman of NAMUR. Also present for the first time were the new board members Dr. Frank van den Boomen (Covestro), Renatus Neijts (DOW) and Tobias Schlichtmann (BASF). And with it, for the first time, an international Executive Board.

The focus of the opening speech this year was the people who make up NAMUR. The badge of honor and special thanks for her many years of service went to Monika Reek, who went into well-deserved retirement last year and who has managed the NAMUR office with full commitment for over 22 years.
Also Dr. Andreas Schadt was awarded the golden badge of honor for his active participation and the many important ideas that were brought in, especially with regard to the modularization of the process industry.

Martin Schwibach was awarded honorary membership as the outgoing head of the department. In particular, his "Schwibach'sche Tunnelbrücke" will accompany NAMUR for a long time to come.
A brief review of the highlights of 2022 and an outlook on NAMUR's strategy concluded the opening speech.

"Functional safety as DNA" - this is how Jörg de la Motte (CEO HIMA) opened the sponsor's lecture entitled "Safety goes digital". He was supported by Sergeij Arent and Peter Sieber. 12 years ago, HIMA laid the foundation for its first sponsorship of the NAMUR main conference on this topic. The safety platform from HIMA enables the consistent digitization of functional safety and thus forms the basis for the overarching goal of sustainable risk management over the entire system cycle.

“Let's think ahead! Simply linking security to products is not enough,” Peter Sieber urged. Based on three theses - Security by design remains an illusion! / Functional safety requires harmony with security! / A successful attack on automation is predictable! – he explained how digitization can be implemented safely and successfully.

In their presentation, Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Niemann (Hanover University) and Marc Risser (BASF) explained in a very entertaining way how Ethernet-APL can be implemented for safety systems. Ethernet-APL offers digital communication with up to 10 Mbit/s up to the sensor and is tailored to the process industry. It supplies field devices with electrical energy and can be used in Ex zones 1/0. For safety applications, an established protocol such as PROFINET is expanded to include an additional safety layer, eg PROFIsafe, in order to exchange physical measured values and additional diagnostic information between field devices and safety systems.

Afterwards, Jens Wiesner (BSI) and Dirk Hablawetz (BASF) exchanged the different views on cyber safety from the point of view of authorities and users in a critical discourse. Put everything on one island, lock every control cabinet, activate communication links only when needed and only allow access to a few authorized employees. A well-secured security system looks like this or something similar in reality – or maybe not? Dirk Hablawetz (BASF) and Jens Wiesner (BSI) discussed new developments and possible threats that can arise from the increasing networking of security systems as digitalization progresses. Parallels in the (historical) development of functional safety and cyber security were shown and classified. In addition to problems, ways out of the dilemma were also discussed, because digitization will continue to progress...

Dr. Felix Hanisch concluded the morning with his presentation on the subject of "Safety in the context of life cycle and sustainability". In this presentation, he looked at the entire life cycle of functional safety applications and put this and its high demand for resources in the context of the current sustainability debate. The following question was raised: Can we manage to reconcile high regulatory requirements with our competitiveness and can we proceed sufficiently efficiently to continue to have sufficient resources for process optimization and defossilization?

The wide-ranging workshop program in the afternoon of the first day with 30 contributions reflected the activities of the NAMUR working groups on the one hand and gave the opportunity to delve deeper into the sponsor's technical solutions on the other. In addition, representatives of cooperation partners presented topics from their associations and current development statuses. Topics such as Module Type Package MTP, NAMUR Open Architecture NOA and their connection with the approach of OPAF, APL, PAT sensors, security, safety and asset administration shell were dealt with. Anyone interested in HIMA products could explore the sponsor's exhibition, which met with great interest.

The second day traditionally began with the presentation of the NAMUR Award. Dr. Stefan Krämer (Bayer) congratulated the winner Yak Ortmanns on his master's thesis "Application of reinforcement learning for process control in the industrial environment" at the RWTH Aachen University. A great work on the practicality of AI for process control.

After that, Dr. Thorsten Dreier (Covestro) as a former member of the Board of Management as an honorary member.

A topic as important and prominent as sustainability was of course also present at the main meeting. Dr. Klaus Schäfer (Covestro) described in his presentation “Full automation. zero emissions. / The role of digitization on the way to climate neutrality.” How an energy-intensive company like Covestro can successfully pave the way to climate neutrality. Digitization is a key enabler here. The vision: "Fully digitized plants are safe, efficient, reliable, predictable, transparent, traceable, compliant and take demographic change into account."

Then the NAMUR auditorium was visited by a special guest: the walking robot spot from Boston Dynamics showed live how advanced the technology has become. In the accompanying lecture, Peter Welter (BASF) and Yannick Kleppinger (Merck) described how these can be used sensibly in the process industry. The prelude to this was offered by the innovation competition (Advanced Industrial Robotic Applications Challenge, abbreviated: AIRA Challenge), in which BASF, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck and Wacker jointly searched for innovative and autonomous solutions under the patronage of NAMUR eV with INVITE GmbH, to automate routine activities in chemical plants.

Cloud technologies have been shaping discussions in the traditional IT sector for years. The expectations are great, the promises even greater: infinite scalability, reduced costs, new business models and a completely new way of handling data – the cloud should deliver all of this. Equally controversial is the question of whether the supposed advantages of the cloud can be transferred from IT to OT. In the presentation by Sebastian Gau (BASF) and Christoph Berlin (Microsoft), the current adoption of cloud in OT was critically questioned, current and future challenges were analyzed and, ultimately, a way was shown of how the vision of Industry 4.0 can become reality in the process industry.

In his presentation, Frank van den Boomen brought in the perspective of the asset owner. Especially in his focus: What is the added value?
Finally, he presented next year's sponsor and gave an outlook on the upcoming event and goals. At the NAMUR main meeting in 2023 we can look forward to the sponsor Schneider Electric, who will take up the motto "Open Automation and Digitalization for Sustainability and Efficiency". The meeting of the automation technology community in the process industry, which is always well attended, will take place again in Neuss on November 23 and 24, 2023.

At the end, Dr. Felix Hanisch (Bayer) summarized the very successful NAMUR general meeting once again, thanked the excellent sponsor HIMA and all those involved.

For further information:

NAMUR e.V.
c/o Bayer AG
NAMUR-Office
Building K 9
D-51368 Leverkusen
Phone: +49 - 214 - 30 - 71034
Internet: www.namur.net
E-Mail: office[at]namur.de