Companies have contingency plans for a variety of circumstances and challenges – even calamities – that might occur. But very few, if any, contemplated a scenario like this pandemic with it hitting the entire world simultaneously and with great speed. As such, the resultant challenges along the entire value chain also appeared simultaneously with some of the challenges interacting with one another and amplifying their seriousness and complexity.

In the process industry, we use face-to-face meetings for the shift handover, for morning meetings, for continuous improvement meetings, for Lean meetings on the shop floor, and for many more instances where communication between involved parties occur. With the pandemic and the requirements associated with social distancing, those meetings can no longer take place with people in close quarters for an extended period of time. As such, everybody must quickly determine and adapt to a new “normal”.

This pandemic offers the opportunity to clearly demonstrate how much we can immediately benefit from the digitization of communication processes; especially for those who haven’t done it yet. And although the pandemic is an extreme case, there will always be the opportunity for some localized crisis which will require you to be agile, resilient, and engaging with great speed and clarity. However, by adapting to this new normal, your operations will be more efficient than before. In addition and considering the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as it penetrates deeper into and across our businesses and its operations, AI will only reach its full potential if we incorporate human intelligence. This is especially true in the process industry where hazardous and complex processes are operated by highly skilled and experienced experts.