Key Takeaways from the OPA Session at ARC Advisory Group’s India Forum

Keywords: Open Process Automation (OPA), ARC Advisory Group’s India Forum, ExxonMobil, Reliance, Yokogawa, Utthunga, OPAF, R STAHL, Interoperability, Ecosystem

Overview

ARC Advisory Group’s India Forum titled Winning in the Industrial AI Era on July 10-11, 2025, saw the convergence of over 300 delegates. On the second day of the Forum, an exclusive session was hosted on Open Process Automation (OPA). The vision of the OPA Forum is to create a secure, open, and interoperable automation architecture that breaks away from traditional proprietary control systems. The architecture is designed to be scalable and adaptable across industries, promoting long-term sustainability and innovation. At its core, OPA emphasizes a collaborative, vendor-neutral ecosystem that empowers asset owners to mix and match best-in-class technologies without being locked into single-vendor solutions. Ultimately, OPA envisions a future where automation systems are more cost-effective, resilient, and capable of evolving alongside technological advancements.

Session Speakers:

• Whit McConnell, Chief Automation & Process Control Engineer, ExxonMobil
• Sunita Devi, Group Lead for Open Process Automation, Reliance Industries Limited
• Ravindra Jagasia, OPAF Forum Co-chair and R STAHL Group
• Mark Hammer, Lead for Open Readiness Center, Yokogawa
• Praveen Kumar Singh, Chief OPC Solutions Architect & OPC-Foundation Accredited Expert, Utthunga

The Journey So Far

Whit McConnell, ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil has been advancing the Open Process Automation (OPA) initiative to modernize and open up industrial control systems. This effort addresses the obsolescence of over 100 distributed control systems (DCS) and aims to reduce costs, improve interoperability, and enable new technologies within the automation architecture. Whit McConnell brings 26 years of experience to this effort. He has witnessed the evolution from proprietary DCS to open systems using commercial off-the-shelf technology, which informs the OPA development strategy.

The motivation for OPA stems from the need to replace more than 100 aging DCS systems by 2025—a challenge fraught with cost and complexity. Traditional approaches are expensive, risky, and time consuming, often requiring months of double operation and physical rewiring. ExxonMobil sought a more sustainable and flexible solution. The company envisions a system that is open, interoperable, and delivers options to avoid vendor lock-in. The primary business goals are to reduce ownership, implementation, maintenance, and lifecycle costs, while making system changes and upgrades easier.

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