Process industries are entering a new era where traditional automation architectures must evolve to integrate AI, digital twins, and data centric workflows without compromising safety, determinism, and compliance. In this session, Siemens leaders Annemarie Breu and Tony White will introduce the next generation of the Orchestration Layer—a unifying, policy aware control framework that bridges process automation with advanced industrial AI.
Building on decades of progress in Process Orchestration Layer (POL) and Module Type Package (MTP)–based modular production, Siemens is now extending orchestration to govern AI-driven decision-making across equipment, production lines, and plants. This new Industrial AI Orchestration Layer (IAOL) provides a real-time global state model, hierarchical state machines, safety interlocks, and “simulate-before-apply” execution using executable digital twins. It embeds AI into operations as a trusted extension of automation—ensuring every action is state-valid, auditable, reversible, and compliant with process constraints.
For process manufacturers facing complexity, variability, and workforce pressure, the orchestration layer becomes the foundation for:
- Digital process twins and data fabric integration
- Human-in-the-loop and policy-aware workflows
- Interoperability via semantic backbones (UNS, MTP)
- Autonomous and semi-autonomous operational scenarios
- Safe activation of GenAI and agentic systems in control environments
Through real-world examples and an interactive discussion, this session will illustrate how a unified orchestration layer transforms fragmented AI experiments into scalable, production-ready capability—unlocking higher yield, resilience, and operational autonomy for the process industries.