An Industrial Virtual Assistant (IVA) platform with Robotic Process Automation that operates like a Digital Knowledge Companion and allows operational staff at industrial facilities to have natural language conversations with the IVA to obtain information about, and to control operations of, industrial facilities, and which automates certain processes based in part on those natural language conversations. In an embodiment, the platform uses a Robotic Process Automater (RPA) to ingest information from documentation, human inputs, and operational data from the facility, organize that information into a knowledge graph containing comprehensive facility information, and apply machine learning algorithms to the knowledge graph to provide natural language responses to human queries and to automate certain processes of the facility.