Universal Automation
A call for change
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
The IT world has moved
on from proprietary
operating systems.
Now it’s industry’s turn.
The future of industry is wide open
™
Schneider Electric
calling it universal automation and it will forever change the way we automate operations.
believes the time is right for a bold move in industrial automation. We’re
Universal automation is the world of plug-and-produce automation software components
(think app store) enabled by the IEC 61499 standard.
We believe “open automation” as it exists today is not open enough. We believe
interoperable and portable application software is an essential enabler for
next-generation industries.
We believe broad adoption of universal automation will unleash a wave of unbounded
innovation and usher in a new era of à la carte automation where cost/performance is
optimized by integrating best-of-breed components without regard to vendor.
We believe industrial enterprises will embrace this ever-growing automation app
marketplace to realize step-change improvements in eciency and sustainability we
could only dream of a decade ago.
And we believe businesses will thrive with universal automation that fluidly adapts to our
changing world to better transform humanity through the food we eat, the technology we
use, the products we consume, the work we do, and the environment we live in.
This is NOT business as usual.
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
Executive Summary
Current industrial automation system architecture has done a good job of advancing industry to
where we are today, but to fully realize the promise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we need to
fundamentally change our technology model.
It is time to release the constraints we have learned to accept: Big engineering efforts, lack of
modularization, and barriers that inhibit adaptability and bog down innovation.
We can create step-change operational improvements with an open, standard-based architecture
and a plug-and-produce application ecosystem capable of keeping up with the speed of doing
business in the digital world.
Will you be part of the universal automation future?
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
À la Carte Automation
A digital world
We are now living in a true digital economy. Technological innovations and the internet have
forever changed how the business of the world gets done.
At the same time, the recent pandemic and resulting global economic disruption has served
as a “wake up call” for industrial enterprises to no longer postpone much-needed operational
advancements in automation and digitalization. Even established companies that were once
perceived to be immune from market fluctuations are finding themselves challenged by
unprecedented global dynamics and by newcomers who are embracing digital technologies
to create agile businesses that better serve the modern world.
No one company can navigate these conditions alone. Persisting in this new world requires an
extended ecosystem of partners collaborating to succeed. It’s time for universal automation.
For manufacturing enterprises, the epidemic has
simply exposed problems and risks that already
existed. As such, it might force industry to undertake
much needed reforms to automation, digitalization
and logistics processes and systems.”
Control Engineering, 2020
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What future do we want?
In a digital world, industrial organizations thrive by seamlessly adapting to ever-changing market
conditions on both the supply and demand sides. By embracing innovative technologies along
with sustainability goals, companies can easily accommodate new business opportunities while
also conserving energy and natural resources.
• Operations respond fluidly and cost-effectively to evolving market demands, to real-time
price fluctuations in energy and raw materials, and to highly dynamic and greatly shortened
product lifecycles.
• Plants and processes are fully optimized for efficiency, reliability, productivity, and
sustainability, supported by a flexible, intrinsically cybersecure digital automation platform.
• Manual tasks are fully automated freeing the industrial workforce to use intuitive technology
and easy to understand analytics to make smart, real-time decisions that create
unprecedented business value.
• Innovations such as augmented reality, remote management tools, and predictive maintenance
ensure that plants and processes are ready for 100% effectiveness. Return on OpEx and
CapEx spend is quickly realized.
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
Today, companies need to be able to respond to
volatile demand, uncertain supply and constrained
capacity. But as we look beyond the pandemic,
they must also be able to respond to demanding
customers who will look for individualized and
sustainable products. If anything, this volatility has
highlighted the need for digital transformation and
industry 4.0.”
Forbes, 2020
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
Constraints Are More
Historical than Technical
Time for change
The incentive to take the leap into the industry of the future is compelling. So, what is stopping
us from unleashing the full power of digital technology and achieving this new level of industrial
enterprise excellence? Surprisingly, the constraints are more historical and psychological
than technical.
In simple terms, proprietary automation systems make it difficult for companies to address digital
age challenges.
Over the last 50 years, little has changed in the fundamentals of how industrial automation systems
are designed, implemented, and operated. They have served us well and taken us this far in
industrial advancement, but digital innovation is limited without truly open automation systems
supporting portable application software. Some constraints include:
1. Automation applications written for one system will not easily run on another. This makes it
costly and difficult for industrial organizations to innovate, so changes are slow and the ability
to integrate revolutionary approaches is limited.
2. Lack of reference implementations for standards creates architectural challenges that lead
to isolated islands of control and inefficiencies. Integrating these islands into a holistic plant
architecture requires a great deal of application engineering, extra hardware, and additional
layers of software in order to build a coordinated plant automation and control system.
The added layers of interfaces contribute to lower reliability, increased unplanned downtime,
and higher costs.
3. Proprietary systems are not designed to take advantage of the recent and rapid changes
in IT. For precisely this reason, they inhibit manufacturers from realizing the full promise of
digital transformation.
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
End Users Demand Open
Open benefits everyone
The pressure to adopt open automation is mounting for stakeholders across all corners of industr y.
End users are beginning to see proprietary automation systems as a barrier to growth and a cost,
rather than an enabler and source of profit.
Many organizations recognize that next-generation industrial automation must be interoperable
and break free from the proprietary locked-in model we have now. A few examples are:
Open Process Automation Forum, NAMUR, and OPC Foundation.
Moving from a proprietary world to universal automation not only benefits end users, but it also
gives those willing to innovate an edge in the race for new value built on software innovation.
Universal automation will create a market for proven-in-use software components that bring unique
values to users and new revenues for vendors.
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Apps Solve Specic
Problems at Low Cost
Lessons from IT
In the IT world, standardized, open operating systems like Linux stimulate an active, broad
ecosystem of developers to create a rich and expansive portfolio of portable, innovative, and
cost-effective software solutions and services that solve very specific business problems.
This paradigm does not exist in the industrial automation world today.
It’s natural for traditional industrial automation vendors to resist change. The concepts of
“interoperable” and “portable” drive against their longstanding business models. But the same
dynamics led to the demise of mainframe computer manufacturers who continued to bundle
software due to what now appears to be market-denial and misguided hubris.
Held hostage by risk-aversion
Vendors benefiting from a proprietary model may argue that building systems based on best-ofbreed components from multiple vendors increases risk, but the reality is just the opposite:
1. Risk is reduced when an end user can benefit from the domain expertise of multiple authorities
with broad and deep competence in a given field, as well as the fresh perspectives from
up-and-coming innovators that challenge the status quo.
2. Proven-in-use software components running on a standards-based system are not only more
reliable but also more easily expanded and adapted for future use. By contrast, customprogrammed proprietar y systems are expensive to maintain and difficult to upgrade.
3. In the IT-world, the approach of using reference implementations eliminates the risk associated
with interpreting written standards and accelerates the creation of de-facto industry standards
with broad support. Open-source Linux has been used for years in mission-critical applications
and is supported by an extensive ecosystem.
The reality is that system integrators/EPC’s are already building solutions with components from
different vendors. It’s just a lot more difficult than it needs to be.
Strategically, traditional automation suppliers who reevaluate their unique value-add to reinvent
their business model will be in stronger competitive positions in the digital world.
As automation systems become more flexible and capable of providing increased end user
value, a virtuous cycle will be created where investment in automation systems will increase.
New business models will be enabled, new customers reached, and new markets ser ved.
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Plug-and-Produce
What will it take?
Fully digitalizing the manufacturing and process industries will require open automation systems
that support:
• Cost-effective and flexible interoperability with enterprise IT systems across the full lifecycle—
from design to operations.
• Applications that can be built using proven-in-use software components, regardless of the
underlying hardware on which the software will run. This reduces cost and time to market while
increasing return-on-investment, flexibility, and overall functionality.
It will take two steps to get there:
1. Create an IEC 61499 standardized automation layer across vendors, in the same
way that Linux has standardized operating systems across computers.
2. Leverage the standard automation layer to enable an ecosystem of developers
to create a rich and expansive portfolio of portable, innovative automation apps
(software components) that solve specific challenges at low cost.
Universal automation will allow OEMs, integrators, and end users to build automation solutions
by plugging together best-of-breed apps using low-code graphical tools. In industry, we call this
plug-and-produce.
Much in the same way that consumers can easily access the latest mobile phone technologies and
apps, industrial stakeholders, will be able to experience ease-of-use at lower costs through much
simpler, less labor intensive behind-the-scenes integration.
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UNIVERSAL AUTOMATION
IEC 61499 Enables
Universal Automation
We have the proven technology
The IEC 61499 standard extends and enhances the IEC 61131-3 standard. It solves the problems
of ensuring por tability, configurability, and interoperability of application software across vendors
and, at the same time, software and hardware independence. IEC 61499 defines a high-level
system design language for distributed information and control systems. It is the technical
foundation of universal automation because it:
1. Enables automation applications to be built using portable, proven-in-use software
components, independent of the underlying automation hardware.
2. Allows the user to distribute the application to any system hardware architecture of choice—
highly distributed, centralized, or both—all with little programming effort. Hardware targets can
be as small as instruments and actuators or as large as powerful edge computers.
3. Supports mainstream software best practices making it easy to create automation applications
that interoperate with IT systems. Native IT convergence and easy portability will drive a
long-term shift from low-value programming of proprietary controllers to high-value plug-andproduce automation systems using proven-in-use automation software components.
IEC 61499 already runs on today’s PC-based platforms and IPCs, as well as modern edgecomputing devices such as Raspberry Pis. Driven by demand from end user organizations,
the trend towards such open hardware platforms continues to accelerate.
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Better than Business
as Usual
Unprecedented opportunity
This new, universal automation world, with IEC 61499-enabled digitization at its center, will surpass
business-as-usual on multiple levels:
1. “Lot size of one” supersedes mass production. The tradition of large, centralized
manufacturing plants only capable of churning out mass produced products halfway around
the world will be replaced with smaller, more distributed manufacturing plants, closer to the
consumer, capable of producing highly customized, affordable products that are fast and cost
effective to deliver. In such a world, the product doesn’t exist until the consumer defines what
it should be. Manufacturers benefit from dramatic reductions in finished goods and work-inprogress inventory throughout the supply chain, delivering output only to paying customers
who are lined up and ready to consume the goods.
2. Step change improvements in efficiency, agility, and sustainability. Advanced
technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning will improve real-time control
of critical business, operating, and sustainability variables with unprecedented precision. Selfconfiguring, self-healing, fast-retooling systems will make it easy for industrial companies to
keep up with the speed and requirements of doing business in the digital age.
3. Minimization of workforce “brain drain.” As the Baby Boomer generation retires, the
potential loss of knowledge is lessened with the advent of systems that learn and improve over
time. As the next generation takes over, software-based automation systems are a more natural
fit to this Digital Native population. The next wave of the workforce won’t be control engineers.
They will be data engineers focused on controlling the process to generate positive business
outcomes and performance.
4. IT/OT convergence is strengthened. A common standard serves as a natural point of
convergence between the physicality of OT and the digital perspective of IT where realtime data is used to make precise business and operating adjustments to improve financial
performance. In addition, supporting multiple programming languages to create a new
generation of portable and interoperable code means that an automation application designed
to run on one manufacturer’s system could also run on another’s. Moreover, automation
engineering can be fast-tracked by wrapping and reusing existing systems.
5. Software plays a leading role. Customer requirements will not be addressed with new
hardware but will require the intelligent application of software-based technologies to address
OT problems. This digital paradigm will provide unprecedented operational capabilities and
support new business opportunities for all industrial stakeholders.
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It Takes an Ecosystem
Universal automation
What will it take for next-generation industrial businesses to thrive?
The proprietary industrial automation architectures that most enterprises currently rely on
constrain innovation, needlessly increase total cost of ownership, and inhibit the adoption of
IT-based advancements. Businesses cannot evolve quickly enough to match the market dynamics
of the digital world.
But why? Next-generation manufacturing and process operations do not have to be centered
around an automation system architecture at all. Instead, the automation system should only
be an open platform tool that is used to implement new manufacturing and production models.
The confluence of digitization and the IEC61499 standard now make it possible.
The IEC 61499 standard is the technical enabler for a plug-and-produce approach to industrial
automation. Adoption of a standardized automation layer, common across vendors, will provide
limitless opportunities for growth and modernization across industry.
The age of plug-and-produce universal automation apps is upon us.
We no longer must live with the constraints we have learned to accept in industrial automation, but
no one company can accomplish all that Industr y 4.0 promises on their own. Persisting in this new
world requires an extended ecosystem of partners collaborating to succeed.
Will you be part of the universal automation future?
For more information
• 5 ways IEC 61499 is liberating Industrial Automation
• Bailing out of the Mainframe Industry
• Coronavirus will force manufacturers to enhance automation, digitalization
• IEC 61499: The Industrial Automation Standard for Portability that
Unleashes Industry 4.0
• Is IEC 61499 the missing link for Industr y 4.0?
• NAMUR
• OPC Foundation
• Open Process Automation Forum
• The Changing Definition of “Good Enough” Automation
• The Missing ‘Industry 4.0/Digitalization’ Link
• The Time for Industry 4.0 Is Now
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Learn more about Universal Automation
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