ARC Leadership Forum, 2025: Schneider Electric revealed new patent introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to process safety to help reduce hazards. AI is expected to enhance risk assessments and process safety studies to semi-automate safety lifecycle activities. A Control Engineering interview adds insights.
Schneider Electric, provider of digital transformation, energy management and automation technologies, has patent to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to help reduce the likelihood process safety hazards, as announced during the 2025 ARC Leadership Forum by ARC Advisory Group. A Control Engineering interview adds insights below about AI and process safety.
This latest patent from the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Triconex Safety team has potential to identify potential hazards and safeguards in a process. The software automatically or semi-automatically, analyzes potential process hazards and validates protection mechanisms in an industrial process. It is then possible to prevent hazards using an analysis tool by engaging protective mechanisms to the process. As more industries embrace digital transformation and generate high-quality data, the advantages of implementing AI in day-to-day operations increases. Process safety management can then take advantage of industrial, real-time data to revalidate HAZOP studies to prevent industrial hazards and save lives.
“We are the first to push this boundary of automating the hazard process analysis with artificial intelligence,” said Chris Stogner, Schneider Electric’s senior director of offer management, in the accompanying Feb. 10 news release. “Bringing AI to functional safety has the potential to create a more rigorous and robust HAZOP study, generating more combinations of scenarios and deviations than what was humanly possible before,” he said.
Generating protective mechanisms for functional safety
The patent is a part of a strategic initiative to enhance functional safety using AI. It is possible to simulate hazards, with varying conditions, and then attempt to prevent dangerous conditions by using a process hazard analysis tool to generate protective mechanisms to the process. Three other Schneider Electric patents incorporating AI into functional safety lifecycle are pending as of this Feb. 10 announcement. News of the innovation comes as there is a growing interest in combining human ingenuity in functional safety analysis with strategic implementation of reenforced learning to prevent hazardous scenarios in industrial automation.
What’s next for the process safety AI algorithm patent?
In a follow-up interview with Control Engineering Feb. 17, Stogner said the patent is on an algorithm; integrating the algorithm into products is next. He envisioned capabilities such as these to run in parallel with other software, providing extra information to existing systems and skilled operators. Because fewer functional safety experts are likely to be available in the future, more sophisticated software is needed to help process safety, functional safety and operational safety. Even among experts, safety assessments can vary; smarter software helps, Stogner suggested.
More is available on Schneider Electric Triconex products.
Mark T. Hoske is editor-in-chief, Control Engineering, WTWH Media, [email protected].
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