2025

Koskinen, Hanna; Heikkilä, Päivi; Myllylä, Mari; Aromaa, Susanna; Karvonen, Antero

The way we carry out our industrial operations needs to be radically transformed to foster sustainable development. In addition, the integration of advanced automation and emergence of AI-based solutions is poised to revolutionize the role of human operators as well as the industrial landscape in process control in general. In this paper, we present a case study on designing and implementing a predictive AI-based service to the wastewater treatment plant of a carboard factory. The new service is aimed at providing an improved overview of the process as well as giving suggestions about the chemical dosing. We have conducted user interviews accompanied with a user experience questionnaire to study how the operators experience the new AI-based service. The results show the potential of intelligent technologies in process control but also highlight the importance of carefully considering the human technology interaction and the need for better integration of expert users’ experiences and knowledge into the AI system. It seems obvious that only human centric approach can lead to smooth and resilient human technology interaction and enhanced industrial operations.