What happens in industrial automation when control is no longer enough? It’s highly likely we will soon find out. After all, the rigid, siloed control structures of the past—built to implement deterministic boundaries—no longer serve the needs of an increasingly connected factory. Today, data is everywhere, and we know how to use that data to improve performance and drive operational excellence.
As Chiara Ponzellini and Renato Pagliari share in an article in Industrial Equipment News, today, visibility does not equate to understanding. The contemporary challenge is no longer to see, but to understand. This shift has driven the need for situated intelligence. Chiara and Renato explain,
“The capacity to understand does not reside in an isolated computational center but originates from the continuous interaction between agent and environment. Intelligence manifests within context, as a form of distributed adaptation and interpretation. Applied to production systems, this idea implies that the factory does not simply receive information but learns from its own behavior: every action becomes a form of knowledge, every datum an act of perception.”
Making the leap
The shift from siloed control to industrial intelligence is a big change. Sensors, controllers, robots, and other devices around the factory are producing data necessary to drive this boundless automation vision. Manually bringing that data together is not efficient or accurate enough to support game-changing operational improvement and innovation. Instead, modern SCADA systems like Emerson’s Movicon.NExT™ provide a foundation for seamless integration to help deliver contextualized data anywhere it needs to be.
That control is just the first layer. In a vacuum, it doesn’t change much about the way teams operate. But in context, it’s extremely powerful
“Above this perceptual layer, analytical models, digital twins, and predictive algorithms form the interpretive stratum – the operational mind of the system. Here, data becomes knowledge, and knowledge guides decisions. Next-generation human-machine interfaces act as cognitive mediators, translating complex relationships among variables into visual and narrative representations of cause and effect. The result is a continuous cycle of sense, in which perception, interpretation, and action reinforce one another.”
Digital twin output, sensing data from devices like AMS Wireless Vibration Monitor, AMS Asset Monitor, and even software like AMS Optics, as well as analytical data from software like Emerson’s Movicon Pro.Lean can be brought together with real-time data from the SCADA system to deliver critical insights. However, this is only possible in an architecture designed to seamlessly move contextualized data between software solutions. The authors explain,
“The realization of interpretive production architecture requires open, interoperable, and semantically coherent infrastructures. Standards such as ISA-95 and integrated digital models ensure continuity between operational and decision-making levels, guaranteeing that every piece of data retains a shared meaning throughout the value chain. Information is not merely transmitted – it is understood.”
Such an infrastructure must be purpose-built to eliminate the need for complex, custom integration between solutions. Every custom integration is a new potential point of failure in the system—both an opportunity for data to lose context and for overall system stability.
This need for seamless, secure connectivity from the intelligent field through the edge and into the cloud is the inspiration behind the Enterprise Operations Platform. As more organizations adopt high-level analytics, AI and ML technologies, digital twin simulations, and more, solutions developed as part of the Enterprise Operations Platform will interconnect, interoperate, and scale seamlessly. This makes it far easier not only to architect new software solutions, but also to implement and maintain them. The impact this strategy will have on the future of operations cannot be understated.
“This transformation redefines how organizations operate and compete. It translates the principles of collective learning into operational architectures, integrating adaptability and interpretation within productive systems. Reflective automation redefines competitive strength through the ability to construct meaning within complexity, making understanding itself a strategic resource. Industry will no longer be measured by quantity but by depth of understanding. Factories will compete through intelligence – the capacity to perceive, anticipate, and evolve. When cognition becomes a property of infrastructure, production and perception merge. The result is a new paradigm of value: the factory that understands, in which knowledge, purpose, and production are unified in a single, continuous act of shared intelligence.”
Chiara and Renato go into more detail in the full article over at Industrial Equipment News, including a concrete example from the automation industry.
It’s never too early to start considering your foundation for the future of automation. Modernization investments not only set organizations up to embrace the emerging technologies that will shape the coming decades of manufacturing, but also drive increased performance today.
