In my previous article “What Manufacturers Need to Know about Software-Defined Automation”, I discussed how Software-defined automation (SDA) is changing the nature of industrial automation, with a focus on the flexibility it provides to hardware selection.
Here, I’m going to delve deeper into the practical application of established software engineering principles in industrial automation environments.
My point in doing this is to help you discover how these concepts can be adapted to address the unique challenges of manufacturing while unlocking new capabilities that drive competitive advantage. For automation professionals and manufacturers weighing this transition, understanding these foundational concepts is the first step toward successful implementation.
The shift from hardware-first to software-first automation
To leverage flexible computing power, SDA applies software engineering concepts like object-oriented programming (OOP), interoperability and DevOps to industrial automation. In a world that is increasingly shaped by software, our current industrial automation tools need to evolve to unlock new technology adoption and drive U.S. manufacturing capabilities forward.
However, since SDA is an emerging topic, it still has many unknowns for applications in our field.
The stakes of appropriately applying SDA are high because safety and time constraints are a bigger concern for industrial applications than they are for traditional software engineering applications such as web applications or IT systems. Two key reasons why:
- Errors can be dangerous to workers or cause equipment damage if a system behaves unexpectedly.
- Equipment downtime due to an unplanned software update simply isn’t acceptable.
While the promise of integrating software engineering concepts into industrial automation workflows is high, adapting them to how engineering, operations and maintenance staff need to interact with automated equipment needs to be done thoughtfully. As more manufacturers shift toward SDA, our industrial automation software tools and programming environments will become more capable and better suited for the OT world.
Adoption of IT programming methods
The next generation of industrial automation platforms will enable SDA by incorporating programming concepts typical in IT and software engineering. In addition to OOP, other concepts include interoperability through application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs).
Some OOP concepts, like abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism already exist in our space in a limited way, but their uses vary widely across the industry. OOP supports enhanced flexibility by making code modular, repeatable and updatable. More modular code can enable quick updates to industrial equipment and make code easier to understand when breaking it up into bite-size pieces.
Interoperability is vital to seamless data exchange between a manufacturing operation's diverse systems. With most equipment being created by various OEMs with their own programming styles, having a way to reach out to other equipment and exchange data either between processing lines or to SCADA, MES and enterprise systems is crucial. In automation projects, knowing what data is available and what can be sent to equipment always seems to be a headache. APIs and SDKs with documentation on how to programmatically interact with software applications is exactly how many software deployments now work in other industries.
The next generation of automation environments promises to make this kind of software interoperability the norm through better workflows for control system developers via libraries, packages and inherent code documentation.
Industry vendors like Siemens, Beckhoff, Rockwell Automation and Schneider Electric are already creating new products to meet this shift. Software development environments like Siemens SimaticAX and Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk Design Studio are bringing SDA to the forefront.
Applying DevOps principles to industrial automation
The DevOps software engineering concept unites development and operations to create faster lifecycles, improve the ability for teams to work together and maintain complex systems.
Currently, the process of design to implementation for an industrial automation project can take months or years. Incorporating DevOps in various stages of design and operation could mean that manufacturers can shorten that time and ultimately be making money faster. And once you’re in the maintenance and optimization stage, DevOps concepts could be used to maintain code bases and rollout updates to operating equipment in a way that ensures the code works the first time and doesn’t cause downtime.
For example, a key aspect of DevOps is unit testing, which automatically tests code before it is deployed on an actual system. In unit testing, teams make rules to execute code and verify that the software application behaves as expected.
Unit testing in industrial automation promises to be transformative when paired with digital twins which could simulate and visualize the actual physics and real-time data of complex machinery. These capabilities can enable engineering teams to imagine and test improvements with less capital investments, while the controls engineer can be confident that their fixes to code won’t have unintended consequences.
Other continuous integration and delivery/deployment best practices, such as version control, can be used in SDA. Version control tools like Git simplify source code management and developer collaboration. The same concept of tracking all modifications made to code can be applied to industrial automation. Integrating these concepts can improve knowing what code is currently running on machinery in plants that might have hundreds or thousands of control system components.
SDA continues to evolve
Though SDA is a somewhat nebulous term, like Industry 4.0, it addresses a wide range of concepts, and its adoption seems to be accelerating in 2025.
If you’re looking for actionable advice on implementing SDA, make it a point to work alongside vendors investing in SDA to step into the future of industrial automation. By doing this you’ll see that the transition can be made incrementally as technical constraints are resolved.
To remain competitive in the industry, it’s important to embrace the movement toward SDA. Sooner rather than later, manufacturers will feel the impact of this monumental change in industrial automation.
G Brooks-Zak, P.E., is co-founder of Outlier Automation, an integrator member of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA). For more information about Outlier Automation, visit its profile on the CSIA Industrial Automation Exchange.
