AVEVA

Learning Objectives

• Understand what AVEVA does and why the PI System matters to process plants
• Evaluate how AVEVA applies AI to operations data and predictive maintenance
• Assess where AVEVA fits in a chemical or process engineer's workflow

What Is AVEVA?

AVEVA is a British industrial-software company and a global leader in software for the process and infrastructure industries. Now owned by Schneider Electric, it builds the tools that design and operate plants, refineries, and production facilities across chemicals, oil and gas, power, and water.

Its most influential product is the PI System, the dominant operational data historian. A historian collects and stores the constant stream of sensor readings coming off industrial equipment — temperatures, pressures, flows, vibrations — and makes that data available for analysis. Because almost every plant AI application needs clean, accessible operations data, the PI System is effectively the data backbone the rest of the AI layer depends on.

How AI Changes the Workflow

AVEVA layers AI on top of that data foundation. Predictive Analytics uses supervised machine learning to learn each asset's normal operating signature, then raises early warnings when behavior drifts toward a failure — catching a degrading pump or heat exchanger weeks before it would force a shutdown. Process Simulation lets engineers design and optimize a process in software, increasingly enriched with AI-guided recommendations on throughput, energy, and quality.

More recently, AVEVA brought generative AI into its cloud platform, CONNECT. An AI assistant lets plant and supply-chain staff ask questions of their operational data in plain language instead of building queries by hand, and the company's roadmap extends toward an industrial knowledge graph and agentic AI that reason across connected plant data.

Who Uses AVEVA?

AVEVA is used across the heavy process industries — chemicals, refining, oil and gas, power, mining, and water — by engineering, operations, and reliability teams. Its install base is especially deep in operations, where the PI System has long been a standard for collecting and contextualizing plant data.

Company Details

Strengths

• Operational data backbone — the PI System is a de facto standard for plant sensor data
• Predictive maintenance — machine-learning early warning on drifting or failing equipment
• Plain-language access — the CONNECT AI assistant lets staff query operations data conversationally
• Design plus operations — spans process simulation through real-time plant operation
• Backed by Schneider Electric — part of a large energy-and-automation ecosystem

Limitations and Considerations

• Enterprise software — quote-based licensing aimed at industrial organizations
• Data-foundation dependent — much of the AI value assumes a well-instrumented, historian-fed plant
• Newer generative features evolving — the knowledge graph and agentic AI are partly roadmap
• Breadth over depth in any one tool — value comes from adopting the connected platform

Pricing

AVEVA is enterprise software licensed through AVEVA and its partners, typically as a subscription, with pricing based on the products deployed (PI System, simulation, analytics), the scale of the operation, and cloud usage. AI features are bundled into the relevant products. Contact AVEVA for a quote.

Key Takeaways

• AVEVA builds the software that designs and runs process plants, anchored by the PI System operational data historian
• Its Predictive Analytics applies machine learning to catch failing equipment early, and CONNECT adds a plain-language AI assistant
• Because clean operations data is the foundation of plant AI, AVEVA's historian underpins much of the wider AI layer
• Now a Schneider Electric company, it spans process design through real-time operations for the chemical and process industries