While I can’t share too far into the future, I wanted to give a flavor of near-term developments with the portfolio of AspenTech products here at the Emerson Exchange 2025 conference. Emerson’s Vikas Dhole led the session. Here is the abstract to the session.
Emerson and AspenTech deliver solutions that drive significant improvements from edge to enterprise – sensor to boardroom, across the entire asset lifecycle. Explore how Industrial AI Solutions enable customers to achieve new levels of agility, guidance and automation across their businesses. Embedded, purpose-built Industrial AI combined with deep domain expertise provides the necessary guardrails, robustness, and trusted results to boost productivity, safely. Find out how Emerson’s Boundless Automation and AspenTech’s Industrial Data Fabric enhances our joint solution for Asset Maintenance & Reliability and enables AI at scale across Asset Intensive Industries.
Vikas opened the presentation by sharing the closed-loop control and asset optimization cycle—see, decide, act, and optimize—and then back to see. This cycle leverages operations data, enhances decision support, and delivers stronger value to manufacturers and producers.
The asset optimization cycle starts with design, then operate, and finally maintain, to create the highest possible value over the entire asset lifecycle. The asset optimization applications include the following categories: performance engineering, subsurface science & engineering (for oil & gas exploration & production), manufacturing supply chain, digital grid management (for power distribution), and asset performance management, all overlayed with an industrial data fabric.
Moving from AspenTech products to integrated products and then to full AspenTech solution can capture 10-15 times the potential value.
Industrial AI enables increased agility, guidance, and levels of automation. AI technologies include machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI. These technologies assist in engineering fundamentals, asset knowledge, and industry experience.
Vikas focused on performance engineering, manufacturing supply chain, and asset performance management. From a performance engineering perspective, key technologies include process simulation and optimization, concurrent engineering, and process digital twin.
Hysys and AspenPlus process simulation and optimization accurately simulate and optimize plant-wide processes across many industries. When combined with the DeltaV Mimic framework, it provides a foundation for IO and equipment models to leverage existing steady-state or dynamic models.
Industrial AI hybrid models can solve new challenges. Vikas shared an example of modeling a yellowness index parameter in a plastics manufacturing process. Traditionally, periodic lab samples had to measure this index. The Aspen AI Builder builds a first-principles model and creates a sensor for the index based on the surrounding operating parameters of the process.
You’ll want to connect with your local Aspen Technology sales organization for a peek into the future developments in the performance engineering domain.
From a manufacturing & supply chain perspective, key technologies include production planning & scheduling, manufacturing execution systems, dynamic optimization & advanced control, and value chain optimization. The production optimization workflow includes planning, scheduling, movements, reconciliation & accounting, and dynamic optimization with advanced process control for closed-loop feedback with control systems, such as the DeltaV system.
The two key products in this area are dynamic optimization and DMC3 advanced process control. The Aspen Virtual Advisor (AVA) for DMC3 provides industrial AI guidance to enhance decision-making and productivity. It is a generative AI application to answer questions and suggest potential solutions to problems that arise. AVA will continue to expand AI guidance across the advanced control domain.
From an Asset Performance Management perspective, key areas include predictive and prescriptive maintenance, process health and product quality prediction, and “what if” decision making. AspenTech Mtell and AMS enable predictive and prescriptive maintenance.
