No Kidding
That requires human anticipation rather than human reaction. It is far easier to manually respond to a single unexpected simple events than to think of all possible failure modes and program around them. I've been in that situation many times as a startup engineer. I've encountered all kinds of problems that could have been programmed around a head of time that no one thought of. Having chemists and engineers on coverage who understood the processes allowed problems to be handled promptly that could have snowballed if left to operators or programs that were not written to handle the unexpected deviation.
Regards,
Mark