The evolution history of industrial automation is, to a certain extent, a history of the transfer of control.
From the early hard-wired era of relay logic, to the digital programming revolution brought by PLC, to today’s wave of digital intelligence with the deep integration of IT and OT, every technological paradigm transition is accompanied by the breaking of system boundaries and the redefinition of innovative logic.
However, when AI algorithms try to be embedded into the production line rhythm, when flexible production requires equipment to be plug-and-play, and when cross-vendor collaboration becomes the norm, the deep-rooted closed genes in the traditional automation system – the deep binding of hardware and software, the numerous barriers to communication protocols, the data separation between the IT world and the OT field – are increasingly becoming obvious bottlenecks restricting industrial innovation.
Open, decoupled, and iterable software-defined automation is gradually transforming from an “optional” to a critical path for industrial automation to move towards the next decade.
So, who will participate in the construction of open rules?
Who can steadily advance “openness” from a concept to an implementable industrial practice?
Against this background, Schneider Electric held the EcoStruxure Open Automation Platform (EAE) ecological co-creation program this year to carry out more extensive collaborative exploration for college students, industry developers and ecological partners, and provide a reference path for the industry to move towards a more open automation system.
1. Closed Dilemma and Open Problem: Industrial Automation Enters the “Software-Defined Era”
Looking back over the past few decades, traditional automation architecture has laid a solid foundation for improving industrial production efficiency, but its underlying design logic has revealed systemic limitations today.
In a closed system, the control logic is closely coupled with the hardware of a specific manufacturer, and upgrading often means tearing it down and starting over; the protocols between different brands of equipment are incompatible, and the cost of interconnection remains high; the OT side pursues real-time stability, while the IT side pursues intelligence and agility, and the two have long been in a state of separation of “same factory but different roads”.
When enterprises try to introduce new technologies such as AI visual inspection, edge computing or digital twins, they often find that these advanced IT tools are difficult to grow naturally on the traditional automation base.
The key to solving this dilemma lies in shifting the underlying logic of automation from “hardware-centered” to “software-defined”.
According to IDC predictions: by 2029, 30% of Chinese factories will centrally configure and manage automation control systems through open, virtualized, and software-defined automation platforms.
This prediction confirms an irreversible industry trend—automation control is moving from a closed proprietary system to an open, programmable platform.
The EcoStruxure open automation platform (EAE) launched by Schneider Electric is a new generation of automation system based on this concept.
The platform is based on event-driven architecture, breaking the binding relationship between industrial software and hardware, allowing control logic to be flexibly migrated between different hardware like applications, achieving true “plug and play”.
The newly released EAE v26.0 further strengthens the unified software runtime architecture and system interoperability capabilities, and introduces AI assistance and universal HMI runtime at the engineering level, significantly improving engineering efficiency and user experience.
Coupled with the Modicon M590 dPAC digital controller, which is the core hardware that integrates real-time control and edge computing, the EAE platform can seamlessly integrate automation control, human-computer interaction and advanced analysis applications on the same device, building a “computing and control integrated” technology base.
In addition, Schneider Electric also launched the industry’s first open, software-defined distributed control system EcoStruxure Foxboro SDA, which combines Foxboro’s existing high reliability with the flexibility of open architecture to provide a low-risk, high-efficiency migration path for the modernization and upgrade of process and hybrid industries.
These technological evolutions jointly point to a clear direction: industrial automation is moving from an era in which capabilities are defined by hardware to an era in which value is released by software.
2. See the real disruptive power of open automation from the “competition questions”
The advancement of technology platforms ultimately needs to be tested in real problems at industrial sites.
If the technical architecture of the EAE platform lays the underlying foundation for open automation, then the EAE ecological co-creation plan launched this time is one of the carriers to transform technological advantages into industrial value and respond to industry pain points.
Different from conventional technical competitions in the industry, all competition questions in this co-creation plan are derived from real business pain points in the fields of energy generation, municipal water affairs, process and discrete industries, data centers and infrastructure.
This design logic of “coming from the scene, going to the scene” makes the co-creation plan inherently have positive implementation genes, and also allows the technical capabilities of the EAE platform to be directly reflected in hard-core scenarios.
Take AI visual defect detection as an example. This seems to be a common intelligent manufacturing scenario, but it is full of challenges under traditional architecture.
Machine vision systems and automated control systems often use different development languages and communication protocols, making it difficult to work together in a unified environment. Complex AI models require extremely high computing power on the edge, and it is even more difficult to quickly output detection results and drive control responses under the constraints of production line rhythm.
Based on the EAE platform, developers can deploy lightweight AI models at the edge, and use communication protocols such as MQTT natively supported by the platform to achieve data interaction and integration between systems, integrating visual inspection, HMI human-machine interface and automation control on the same edge device.
Through drag-and-drop process orchestration, the data flow and event linkage configuration between machine vision algorithm results and automatic control logic are completed to achieve rapid defect detection and response, allowing AI vision to truly transform from a “technical bonsai” in the laboratory to a “practical tool” on the production line.
Let’s look at the problem of precise dosing in sewage treatment scenarios.
Water quality parameters are constantly changing, and the traditional PID adjustment method can easily lead to excessive dosage or delayed response, which not only increases costs but also affects the treatment effect.
The software-centric architecture of the EAE platform provides the ground for in-depth industry scenarios for adaptive intelligent dosing algorithms.
Developers can integrate intelligent algorithms with underlying sensor data collection and actuator control to build a precise closed loop of perception, analysis, decision-making, and execution.
Not only that, for water companies with group management needs, the EAE platform can also rely on high replicability to significantly reduce the development and maintenance workload of projects with similar processes under the same group, achieving a leap from single-point optimization to global efficiency improvement.
In addition, the co-creation plan covers equipment predictive maintenance, intelligent production scheduling, production line collaborative optimization and other competition topics, which all accurately hit the industry’s high-frequency pain points.
The implementation and exploration of these scenarios fully confirms the core value of the open automation platform: relying on an open standardized architecture to break down traditional technical barriers, so that cutting-edge digital technologies such as AI and edge computing are no longer floating concepts, but practical tools that can be deeply integrated into the entire process of industrial production and effectively solve production problems.
From single-point technological breakthroughs to full-scenario adaptation, EAE’s technical hard-core capabilities have transformed open automation from an industry trend into an implementable, verifiable, and replicable industrial reality.
3. More than just a “race”: the co-creation plan reshapes the industrial ecology and promotes automation to open up
The transformation of industrial automation is never an iteration of a single technology, but an all-round reconstruction of technology, ecology, and models.
Schneider Electric’s EAE ecological co-creation plan is different from traditional technology competitions – it is not just to determine the winner of a technical solution, but is committed to building an industry problem-solving platform that can link industry-university-research resources and output implementable solutions.
The systematic support provided by Schneider Electric to participants clearly outlines a complete closed loop from creative incubation to commercial implementation: fully opening up the EAE platform and technical resources, providing developer and technology partner certification, building a bridge to connect customer needs, and providing real project verification opportunities. Excellent results are also expected to be included in Schneider Electric’s official application and case system, and be displayed and promoted to the entire industry.
At the same time, this co-creation plan is also reshaping the collaborative paradigm of industrial innovation.
For a long time, universities and scientific research institutes have mastered cutting-edge algorithms, but have suffered from the lack of real industrial scenarios and engineering verification platforms; industrial companies have faced pain points and often cannot find suitable digital tools; start-ups and developers have innovative energy, but it is difficult to break through the “last mile” of commercial implementation.
The EAE ecological co-creation plan uses the linking effect of the open platform to bring together innovative elements scattered everywhere into a stream.
In fact, before recruiting from the public, the program has taken the lead in launching recruitment for college students in conjunction with the Go Green program of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Innovation Competition, achieving full coverage of the industry-university-research chain.
University teams no longer “work behind closed doors”, but can directly benefit from Schneider Electric’s industry insights accumulated over decades of deep involvement in the industry, use real industrial data to train models, and use real control logic to verify algorithms.
This new ecological model is changing the single and closed development pattern of the traditional automation industry.
It is no longer a single enterprise leading technology iterations, but gathering the forces of industry, academia, and research to jointly participate in technological innovation, scene polishing, and standard improvement, continue to enrich the EAE platform application ecology, promote the continuous iteration and popularization of open automation technology, and build a solid ecological foundation for the long-term development of the industry.
4. Open co-creation anchors the next decade of automation
The next decade of industrial automation is one of openness, integration, and co-creation.
Under the wave of industrial digitalization, intelligence, and high-end development, closed and monopolized technology systems will eventually be eliminated by the times. An open, collaborative, and continuously iterative innovation ecosystem will be the core competitiveness of the industry in the future.
When the walls of closed systems are dismantled one by one, and when software definition becomes the industry standard, whoever can take the lead in building a prosperous developer ecosystem, rich application scenarios, and a smooth industry-university-research collaboration chain will have the right to define the next era.
With the EAE ecological co-creation plan as the fulcrum, Schneider Electric is transforming the openness of its technology platform into a mobilizing force for ecological innovation.
This is not only an ecological layout for the future, but also a declaration inviting the industry to open up automation.
For the majority of industrial enterprises, developers and system integrators, this means that a new window of opportunity has opened: instead of passively waiting for technological iterations, it is better to actively join the co-construction of this open ecosystem.
When more and more innovative forces join this open ecosystem, and when more and more industry pain points are overcome, verified, and replicated on the EAE platform, the next decade of industrial automation will surely show a prosperous picture that far exceeds today’s imagination.
When industrial automation moves toward openness, the answer to leading the next decade has already been written on the starting point of this ecological co-creation.
