Modernisation without disruption: Unlocking industry’s full potential
04/08/2026 ABB Limited (Zurich)
By Stefan Basenach, Senior Vice President of Automation Technology at ABB
For decades, industrial automation has always been judged by one metric above all others: uptime. Yet today, the systems responsible for delivering uninterrupted production are also expected to support AI, cloud services, advanced analytics and ever-changing cybersecurity requirements. Those two objectives are increasingly pulling automation in different directions.
This shift is also changing how organisations approach modernisation. The question is no longer whether to modernise, but how to do so without compromising operational stability.
Digital technologies, including advanced analytics, AI, edge intelligence and cloud connectivity, offer significant opportunities to improve performance, efficiency, and decision-making. However, the issue lies in their integration, and many existing control systems were never designed to integrate these technologies, making adoption more complex and increasing potential risk.
The challenge isn't that existing control systems are outdated. It's that control systems and digital technologies operate on completely different innovation cycles. A distributed control system may remain in service for twenty years or more. AI models, cybersecurity requirements and cloud software may evolve every few weeks. Expecting one architecture to accommodate both creates unnecessary compromise.
Modernising without compromising uptime
While the value of digital technologies is clear, introducing them without disrupting production is the obstacle.
Historically, modernisation has meant major upgrade projects involving planned downtime, retraining, and periods of operational disruption. While this approach reflected the pace of technology at the time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify in today’s modern and rapidly evolving landscape.
Today’s operators need to respond to a changing industrial environment, where ageing automation infrastructure must be managed alongside evolving cybersecurity regulations, such as the EU’s
In 2026, manufacturers across the UK and Europe are projected to lose between £124-£157 billion in unplanned downtime. It’s clear that operators need continuous evolution rather that periodic and disruptive replacements.
The limits of traditional automation architectures
Distributed Control Systems (DCS) have long performed as the backbone of industrial automation. By providing a centralised view of plant processes, they have helped deliver greater reliability, consistent production, and safer operations across industries.
It must be said, the DCS is not the issue, but the changing demands placed upon it. Traditional automation architectures were designed for a time when innovation cycles were measured in decades rather than months. Today, analytics platforms, AI applications, cloud services, and cybersecurity requirements evolve continuously, while the underlying control systems supporting production are expected to remain stable for many years.
At the same time, manufacturers increasingly rely on data from field devices and connected systems to improve efficiency, optimise performance, and strengthen operational resilience. Introducing these new digital capabilities into tightly integrated automation environments can become complex, costly and disruptive.
Traditional DCS remain highly effective at delivering reliable, deterministic control. However, when digital applications are tightly coupled to the control environment, every new capability, software update, or security enhancement has the potential to increase complexity and operational risk.
Bolt-on digital solutions can help address this, but when they remain detached from the core automation architecture, they often fail to deliver the seamless integration and flexibility needed to support continuous innovation.
Rethinking automation architecture
To achieve continuous uptime, while still benefiting from the latest innovations, manufacturers should move towards architectures that protect mission-critical control from higher-level monitoring, optimisation and AI applications, while keeping both environments securely connected.
At the heart of this approach is the principle of separation of concerns. Two separate but securely connected environments, each optimised for a different purpose.
ABB's Automation Extended approach puts this principle into practice by separating the core control environment from a securely connected digital environment, allowing each to evolve independently while preserving the continuous availability that industrial operations depend on.
This approach allows the control systems, where the real-time processing hub sits, to remain reliable, cyber-secure and resilient, enabling each environment to fulfil a distinct role. The control system continues to provide the reliable, deterministic performance that industrial operations depend on, while the digital environment becomes a space where new applications, analytics, and AI capabilities can be introduced, tested, and refined independently.
By having separate yet connected areas, modernisation can be achieved incrementally, rather than purely through major upgrade programmes. Security patches, software updates, and new digital applications can be introduced as needed, reducing disruption while allowing operations to benefit from continuous technological progress.
This flexibility is enabled through open architectures built on standards such as OPC UA, alongside cloud-native technologies and container-based software. These architectures reduce dependence on proprietary integration, allowing organisations to adopt new technologies as they emerge rather than waiting for platform-specific development. Together, these technologies simplify integration, improve interoperability and make it easier to deploy new capabilities across sites and fleets without extensive redevelopment.
Modernisation is about enabling continuous innovation
Instead of waiting for major DCS upgrades to gain new functionality as done in the past, organisations can now introduce new digital capabilities as business needs evolve. Predictive maintenance, AI-assisted diagnostics, digital twins, fleet-wide analytics and advanced optimisation can all be deployed independently of the underlying control system.
The advantage of a flexible architecture is that organisations can adopt new technologies when they deliver measurable operational value, rather than according to fixed upgrade cycles.
Separating digital innovation from the core control system also extends the value of existing automation investments. Rather than replacing proven control infrastructure to access new functionality, manufacturers can continue building on it, improving return on investment while reducing operational disruption.
Industrial automation has always prioritised reliability, and rightly so. But reliability no longer needs to come at the expense of innovation. The next generation of industrial automation will be defined by the architecture that allows the intelligence of individual applications to evolve without disrupting production. In the years ahead, architectural flexibility may prove to be automation's most valuable capability.
This architectural philosophy reflects ABB's long-standing approach of combining innovation with continuity, allowing customers to introduce new capabilities while preserving the reliability and value of their existing automation investments.
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ABB Limited (Zurich)
ABB Industrial Automation
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Zurich
8050
Switzerland
Tel: +65 (0)6773 5857
Web: https://www.abb.com
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