Legacy Upgrades: Make a Plan or Risk Costly Downtime

According to the recent poll Digitalizing Industrial Motors & Drives: Four Upgrades Enabling the Next Era of Efficiency, “Extending asset lifetime and improving efficiency are overwhelming drivers.” The next most frequently cited motivators are the desire for improved operational efficiency (99%) and better asset utilization (99%), painting a clear picture of an industry focused on maximizing the value and performance of existing capital-intensive equipment.

Industrial-automation equipment in all industries, especially in heavily regulated industries, requires continued attention to not only perform well but remain in compliance with perpetually changing regulations. Too often, organizations immediately jump to the idea that they will need to re-build their entire systems at a huge cost to achieve this, but that’s not always the only way.

Legacy Upgrades

Legacy systems don’t always require a complete overhaul to deliver meaningful improvements. Incremental control-system upgrades can be a practical way to improve performance without the need for a full overhaul. Upgrades can positively affect operations, efficiency, safety and overall business performance, freeing up your employees to focus on higher-level strategic job roles.

Additionally, planned upgrades can be more cost-effective than large capital expenditures when competing financial priorities become a reality in your organization. Just a few of the benefits we see often include:

• Incorporating advanced technologies, automation and streamlined processes for operational efficiency
• Enhanced reliability and predictive maintenance capabilities saving both time and money
• Modernizing equipment designed with energy-efficient standards leading to long-term savings
• Updating equipment ensuring compliance with updated regulations and standards 
• Enhancing connectivity to enable real-time data-collection and analysis, empowering informed business decisions
• Remote monitoring and control enabling situational awareness and centralized operations

Success Lies in the Planning

While speaking recently at Colorado Rural Water Conference (CRWA) on strategies to approach system upgrades, Nick Hein, PE (Huffman Engineering’s Lead Engineer–Colorado) said, “This should not start with a conversation with two people behind a desk saying, ’This is what we should do.’” Rather, there are reliable steps that will allow for upgraded projects to be successful in the end no matter your industry.

1. Make a List

Ask yourself, what do you have? Start at a high level and work your way deeper. A first pass could look like a list of all the control panels you have within your facility and/or remote sites. Eventually aim to know which sites have what type of hardware in them so you can track product lifecycle. This should, at least, include part numbers for any ‘smart’ devices (PLC, HMI/OIT, Ethernet Switches). If you haven’t already done that and don’t have the time, seek out a trusted partner to help you. 

2. Walk your System 

Spend time with the operators who work with the systems on a daily basis or automation teams who work on the systems in order to hear about the pain points they have and opportunities they see for improvement. This step works best in person at the facility with all parties present: management (the people writing out the upgrade plan and working on funding), operations (the people running the system daily), and automation (the people who would execute the upgrades; this could be an internal automation team or an external system integrator).

3. Map out an Upgrade plan

From the information gathered in Steps 1 and 2, sort out a priority list of upgrades. Once you have a prioritized list, plan to look for funding sources and trusted partners to help execute your upgrades. Setting a short-term and long-term execution plan to follow will keep your team accountable to make systematized upgrades on a regular schedule and strategically moving toward your goals.

According to Hein, “The goal is in the end to have a maintainable, documented, future-ready system.” When you’ve collaborated with all the right trusted parties in the beginning, you’ve set yourself up for success on the back end.

Engineering with Excellence

Chemical Engineer Caleb Feagans, addressing the audience at the conference, said, “Many plants are working with legacy hardware and software supported on Windows 10 or earlier that’s now been considered out of service for about a year. Modernization (in some sectors) is one of those things that nobody wants to talk about, but it’s going to have to happen and if we keep kicking the can down the road there’s got to be a point where you’ve got to pick that can up.”

As Caleb’s perspective highlights, the conversation around legacy upgrades really comes down to timing, risk and finding the right partner. Organizations that take a more proactive approach by working with experienced teams to assess, prioritize and execute modernization efforts tend to be in a much better position to reduce risk and see long-term value. When upgrades are treated as a strategic step instead of a last-minute reaction, it becomes a lot easier to move forward with confidence and set the stage for what’s next. 

This is an exciting time to shape the future of industrial manufacturing and public utilities both in the United States and across the globe from our perspective as system integrators. We are working within industries building the fundamentals of our society: food and beverage, agriculture, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, manufacturing, water and wastewater and electricity, to help upgrade our infrastructure is foundational to our future.

An eye toward planned upgrades on critical systems will enable organizations to take advantage of new technologies and increase reliability. Any time you can limit downtime or prevent points of failure, you are—in the end—saving yourself from what could be a very costly situation.