EMBEDDED TECHNOLOGY
Open vs. Traditional Systems in industrial automation:
A comprehensive guide to strategic decision making A
production line had ground to a halt, not due to mechanical failure or operator error, but because a proprietary programmable logic controller (PLC) from a leading automation vendor had malfunctioned.
Several years ago, during a site visit to an automotive parts manufacturer, Giampiero Baggiani, co-founder of Sfera Labs, witnessed firsthand the consequences of vendor lock-in diagnostics; and
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Modify the control logic to implement temporary workarounds.
The particular model had been discontinued just two years prior. Despite being part of a “long-term support” program, the manufacturer could only offer a complete system upgrade at exorbitant costs and requiring six weeks of production downtime.
What struck me most wasn’t the immediate financial impact, but the complete loss of control the customer experienced. They couldn’t: •
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The proprietary PLC had become a black box of unintelligible firmware and undocumented protocols. There they realised they had built a mission-critical infrastructure on systems that they neither fully understand nor truly control. This experience reinforced a hard truth: in industrial automation, longevity and control matter just as much as performance. The choice of a systems isn’t just about technical specifications, it’s about long-term operational resilience.
Get access to schematics to source alternative replacement components; Access the controller’s firmware for
While traditional proprietary systems have dominated for decades, open technologies are increasingly proving their worth – but not without trade-offs.
The philosophical divide in industrial control
At its core, the choice between open and proprietary industrial systems represents two fundamentally different philosophies about technological sovereignty and control.
Proprietary systems operate on a principle of centralised expertise. Vendors argue – often correctly – that their tightly integrated stacks deliver reliability through rigorous testing and controlled environments. There’s comfort in this approach, particularly for operations teams who can point to a single throat to choke when things go wrong. The major automation vendors have built empires on this value proposition, offering what appear to be complete solutions where every sensor, controller, and HMI speaks the same proprietary language.
20 MAY 2025 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS
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