The process industry of today cannot be accused of being dynamic or agile. The reason is understandable: capital investment is huge, and processes are expected to run for 20 to 40 years. Nevertheless, the process industry used to be ahead of other industries.
Two examples:
(1) DCS (distributed control systems) stem from the 1980s and are a precursor to the modern world wide web. Data could be exchanged long before people saw the need to send live videos around the globe.
(2) Model predictive control (MPC) was developed by process control practitioners in the 1990s in the oil and gas industry before they became a thing among academics and moved to other industries, such as energy and automotive.
DCS and MPCs came about because there was a pressing financial need to make processes more efficient as well as safer. Unfortunately, finding a similar economic improvement is hard, partly because the DCS with its PID algorithm is doing an excellent job.