The importance of automation in the process industries has increased dramatically in recent years. In the highly industrialized countries, process automation serves to enhance product quality, master the whole range of products, improve process safety and plant availability, efficiently utilize resources and lower emissions. In the rapidly developing countries, mass production is the main motiv...

Operators and domain practitioners often complain that automation is brittle, opaque, and ‘not worth the effort’ to use. This paper reviews automation problems and methods for the design of ‘cognitive automation.’ Cognitive automation is software intended to automate cognitive activities, such as situation assessment, monitoring, and fault management, that are currently performed by human opera...