Perspective for equipment automation in process industries ⁎ ⁎This work is based on research supported by the project (No. 296432), Towards sustainable mineral processing via plantwide eMPC, Mineral Resources and Material Substitution-MISU, 2014-2019 Int. call for joint projects in mineral resources research, South Africa and Academy of Finland, project 5G meets Industrial Internet financed by Technology Industries (No. 3102144), the National Natural Science Foundation of China project (No. 61603418), the 111 Project (B17048), the National Research Foundation of South Africa (IRC grant number 103666).

Advances in digital technologies are improving manufacturing systems dramatically. These advances, along with increased interconnectivity of devices, have launched the Industry 4.0 initiative that is concerned with how cyber physical systems and the internet of things can create adaptive, modularised, efficient, and reliable processing systems. This work presents a perspective on how equipment automation can contribute to this goal. Some of the main obstacles in the way of efficient and flexible operations are highlighted. How these may be overcome through equipment automation to form a cyber physical automation network is also presented. The effective integration of these methods can realize the vision of Industry 4.0 in the processing industry.