The benefits of software-defined industrial control systems

Some of the benefits include:

Opportunities to improve operations through process optimisation and improvements of quality and yield.

Cost reductions from the ability to utilise standard products (COTS hardware and open software).

Software solutions add flexibility and can be easily updated to keep pace with innovation.

For those who understand the value of moving to software the next question becomes: “How do I get started?” It’s not an easy question to answer because everyone’s use case is at least a little bit different.

However, for most it will involve 4 key steps: Pilot, Analyse, Plan, and Deploy.

From a high-level, you will need to first understand what it is you want to accomplish by moving to a digital solution then: identify a key process that could benefit and implement some key updates, analyse the pilot data to define new insights and build a business case to expand, define an expansion plan, and then execute that plan. 

Sounds pretty straightforward right? Maybe, maybe not. One thing is for sure, it will be critical that you are able to recognise some benefit for making this move to digital, and that is going to require some planning.

This is why we teamed up with Artesyn Embedded Technologies to present the web seminar, ‘Reaping the Benefits of Software-Defined Industrial Control Systems.’

In this session Wind River cover a range of topics including: why you should explore new industrial control technology, how to address current system limitations with software defined solutions, a description of what an optimised hardware platform and a secure integrated software platform ought to look like, and a discussion of the steps you will need to take to realise the benefits of a software defined solution.

‘Reaping the Benefits of Software-Defined Industrial Control Systems’ is available on-demand.

Courtesy of Wind River.