FEATURE Smart factories & software


  


system STAY A STEP AHEAD OF ASSET CHAOS STAY A STEP AHEAD OF ASSET CHAOS


Shaun Chapman, sales director at Enhanced Control Solutions, explains why asset chaos is the quiet enemy of reliable automation


M


ost automation engineers have lived the same moment: A line is down. Production is waiting. A


laptop is open. And before any fault-  isn’t what’s wrongwhat exactly am I looking at?


Which PLC version is live? Where is the last known-good backup?   and under what circumstances? More often than many would like to  a fault in the control system. It begins with uncertainty.  should be more reliable than ever. PLC   are powerful. Yet unplanned downtime remains stubbornly common. The issue is rarely a lack of engineering capability.  around assets over time.  accumulate layers of change:   and undocumented tweaks made under   ambiguity.


When engineers no longer have   every intervention becomes higher risk. Modern manufacturing environments


 even a decade ago. A single site may 


16 February 2026 | Automation


  several generations of engineers.    individuals’ heads is lost. Documentation often  in places no one checks during an incident.  faster than the processes used to manage them. “Most automation failures we see aren’t   Solutions and Shift Hero. “They’re caused by     The impact of poor asset management is most visible during incidents. An engineer faced with uncertainty will naturally proceed cautiously. Code is reviewed line by line. Changes are double-checked. Decisions that should take  wrong is too high.


   downtime and increases pressure across the operation. 


slow recovery reinforces the belief that systems  conservative behaviour during future incidents. What starts as missing information becomes a persistent reliability issue. At the heart of reliable automation is    


 understood its importance for years. The    forced to operate defensively.


“Automation engineers don’t just need  “They need certainty. When that certainty is   There is a growing recognition across the industry that asset and software management is not administrative overhead; it is core engineering hygiene.


Reliable automation depends as much on information integrity as it does on hardware  fastest from incidents are rarely those with the  understanding of their assets. This shift is subtle but important. Asset management is moving from being something done after problems occur to something designed before they do.  a maturation of the discipline. As systems become more interconnected and  increasingly depends on how well information is controlled and shared. The irony of automation downtime is that the most important work often happens long   ownership don’t prevent every fault – but they dramatically reduce the time and risk involved 


In an industry where minutes matter and


  improvements available. Asset chaos rarely announces itself. It sits  visible when systems fail. For those responsible  be one of the most impactful steps they can take toward long-term reliability.


Enhanced Control Solutions ecs-uk.com


automationmagazine.co.uk


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40