NAMUR Annual General Meeting 2025: Impulses for the Autonomous Plant and the Future of the Process Industry

The autonomous plant is not a distant vision of the future, but an essential reality – and measurement technology is the key enabler. With this message, KROHNE participated as a sponsor of the 88th NAMUR Annual General Meeting, which was fully booked with around 650 participants and is considered one of the most important events for the chemical and petrochemical industry in Germany.

Europe is under pressure to innovate. To safeguard prosperity and competitiveness, the process industry must consistently embrace digitalisation, standardisation and artificial intelligence.

“We must continue to increase the efficiency and flexibility of our plants and use automation and autonomous functions as key strategic levers. They enable continuous improvement and rapid adaptation to a dynamic market environment – opening up new opportunities,” says Tobias Schlichtmann (Chairman of NAMUR e. V.).

Under the guiding theme “Future-proofing our Industry: Milestones towards Autonomous Plants”, Attila Bilgic, CEO of KROHNE, and Dagmar Dirzus, VP Artificial Intelligence & Platform Business, outlined in their jointly delivered keynote how this path can be realised through three central milestones:

1. Connectivity – The digital foundation

Complete connectivity of all field devices and systems forms the basis for modern automation. Technologies such as Ethernet-APL, NOA and OPC UA enable secure, structured and vendor-independent data transmission – even beyond traditional automation layers. This infrastructure provides the foundation for all further digitalisation steps.

2. Beyond Diagnostics – More than just condition data

Modern measuring devices deliver not only diagnostic data but also enable deeper process analysis through predictive maintenance and plug & produce. Interoperability and standardised interfaces (e.g. NAMUR MTP, Asset Administration Shell/AAS) form the basis for efficient collaboration and seamless system integration.

3. Intelligence in Every Measure – AI as a process advisor

Measuring devices are evolving into intelligent information sources. Digital twins, AI‑supported analytics and learning systems enable adaptive control recommendations and semi-autonomous process operation.

“The measuring device of the future will be far more than a simple sensor – it will evolve from a pure data source into an intelligent node within the overall system. With simple means, we increase the number of primary measured values within a device and, with the help of an AI agent, multiply the amount of process information,” explains Attila Bilgic. “More measured variables in one device mean fewer devices for the same number of measurement parameters – resulting in less planning, reduced maintenance and lower costs. At the same time, we gain a new quality of measurement through the correlation of different parameters and AI-based evaluation.”

“In future, we will see significantly fewer simple measuring points, while the number of intelligent measurement nodes will increase slightly,” adds Dagmar Dirzus. “This leads to substantially reduced costs for instrumentation, maintenance and plant operations. In this way, measurement technology makes a considerable contribution to maintaining the competitiveness of the process industry.”

Feedback from the NAMUR organisation and participants alike was consistently positive – both regarding the technical quality and the overall atmosphere of the event.

“The NAMUR Annual General Meeting demonstrates how consistently we, as a community of users and manufacturers, work on ensuring the future viability of our industry: with innovative technologies such as Ethernet‑APL and NOA, open standards and practical support for successful implementation. In doing so, we not only create the basis for cost-efficient implementations and long-term investment security, but also support users from project initiation to the successful use of new solutions,” concludes Tobias Schlichtmann.

For those interested, KROHNE has set up a dedicated webpage for the event: https://namur.krohne.com.

It includes video recordings of the keynote, the KROHNE workshop presentations, interviews with participants and impressions from the accompanying exhibition.