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Innovation, quality, and productivity today rely on software systems often designed decades ago. Despite their proven robustness, these bespoke applications struggle to accommodate new requirements, expose the company to security vulnerabilities, and incur rising maintenance costs. Modernizing this entire stack without disrupting production lines or compromising manufacturing performance is a real challenge for CIOs and business leaders. This article offers a pragmatic roadmap based on stabilization, documentation, targeted modernization, and gradual integration. At every stage, the goal is to preserve operational continuity while preparing the industrial ecosystem for future demands.
Why Your Industrial Software Is Becoming a Drag on Performance
Legacy systems accumulate defects and vulnerabilities that slow down production. They weigh heavily on maintenance costs and limit operational agility.Their growing complexity creates a bottleneck for IT teams.
Obsolete Technologies and Technical Debt
Many factory software applications are still developed in Delphi, Cobol, or C++, languages now uncommon and difficult to evolve. This software obsolescence complicates the search for qualified talent and lengthens incident resolution times. When a vulnerability is identified, applying a patch may require a partial overhaul due to missing documentation or automated tests.
These inherited technological choices hinder the adoption of modern, high-performance solutions. Adding new features then becomes an obstacle course, where each modification demands rare expertise. As a result, teams spend more time stabilizing the existing system than innovating.
For example, a Swiss machine tool manufacturer relied on a C++-based MES over twenty years old. Each update took more than three weeks and exposed the production line to intermittent failures. This experience led them to fully document the legacy system before any modernization effort.
Security Flaws and Single-Expert Dependency
When all expertise resides in the mind of a single developer or longstanding contractor, security patches become critical. An unplanned departure can halt maintenance and leave the system exposed to attacks.
Unpatched vulnerabilities accumulate—backdoors, injection points, or unsupported third-party components. Even a minor incident can then paralyze the entire production, resulting in costly shutdowns and internal investigations.
The lack of redundancy in technical knowledge increases operational risk, as any unavailability of the key resource creates a true single point of failure.
Lack of Integration with Modern Tools
Factory software built fifteen or twenty years ago did not anticipate interfacing with ERPs, cloud platforms, or analytics solutions. The absence of standard APIs creates data silos and prevents real-time visibility of operations.
Without IoT or cloud integration, data collection relies on manual exports or homemade scripts, which are unreliable and hard to maintain. Reporting often remains static, lacking proactive alerts or history-based forecasting.
A Swiss materials processing company, for example, performed manual CSV exports each month to track quality metrics. This process took two days and was error-prone, delaying decision-making.
Typical Use Cases to Watch Closely
Certain critical applications deserve constant attention to avoid production stoppages. From inventory management to quality control modules, each workflow carries specific challenges.Prioritizing the identification of potential failure points before they occur is essential.
Production Management and Quality Control Software
These systems orchestrate machine scheduling, operator assignments, and batch traceability. Any latency or malfunction leads to chain delays.
Quality control integrated into these software solutions must be able to immediately trigger an alert to stop the line or isolate a non-compliant batch. Without this responsiveness, the risk of serial defects increases.
For instance, a measuring instrument manufacturer used an embedded QC module in its initial ERP but lacked dynamic thresholds. Any anomaly remained without automatic action, generating costly rejects until manual analysis at the end of the week.
Preventive Maintenance Systems
Planned maintenance relies on forecasting algorithms and machine data feedback. Static or disconnected software cannot anticipate failures or optimize maintenance flows.
A delayed update of the equipment monitoring system can lead to untimely interventions or, conversely, undetected breakdowns. The cost of an unexpected stoppage can amount to several thousand Swiss francs per hour.
Modern solutions integrate IoT sensors and generate automatic reports, reducing manual interventions and improving equipment availability rates.
Inventory and Logistics Management Tools
Tracking supplies, consumption, and turnover requires smooth data transfer between ERP, WMS, and production systems. A monolithic software can create information gaps.
Without real-time synchronization, some materials are either overstocked, tying up capital, or out of stock, halting production. The resource-to-need balance remains fragile.
A Swiss electronics manufacturer conducted a daily manual inventory. Faced with frequent discrepancies, it planned excessive orders, impacting its cash flow and causing delivery delays.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support mid-sized and large enterprises in their digital transformation
What Makes Industrial Software So Unique (and Complex)
Industrial constraints demand near-continuous availability and strict standards. Architectures must account for highly specific hardware-software interfaces.Any planned or unplanned downtime can wipe out decades of productivity investment.
24/7 High Availability
Production lines cannot tolerate interruptions, even short ones. Every update must rely on failover or redundancy mechanisms to avoid downtime.
Unlike traditional web applications, an unavailable microservice can stop an entire manufacturing chain. Robustness and resilience are therefore at the core of the architecture.
Test environments must faithfully reproduce the production configuration to validate patches before deployment.
Inability to Halt Production for Updates
Unlike standard maintenance windows, workshops often lack downtime slots to deploy changes. Evolution must occur live, without shutting down.
Blue-green deployments or canary releases allow phased, reversible changes. This strategy limits risk but requires precise orchestration.
Poor synchronization can cause version mismatches and cascading blockages that are harder to fix in real time.
Machine Interfaces and Data Flow Specificities
Each piece of equipment embeds a protocol or fieldbus (Profinet, OPC UA, Modbus…). Data flows are often proprietary and do not support modern standards.
Interfacing requires developing custom adapters while ensuring latency and reliability meet workshop requirements.
A poorly managed conversion can cause machine parameter errors, resulting in scrap or mechanical failures.
Industry- and Sector-Specific Regulatory Compliance
Pharmaceutical, food, and aerospace industries must comply with specific ISO, FDA, or EN standards. Software must include tamper-proof records and comprehensive audit logs.
Each software change may require requalification or a new validation cycle. Traceability is not optional but a legal requirement.
Non-compliance can lead to sales bans, product recalls, or severe penalties.
Working with a Specialized Partner: A Methodology to Modernize Your Software Without Full Rewrites
Partnering with an industrial software specialist ensures a structured, step-by-step approach that minimizes risk. The goal is to extend and secure the existing system before considering a full rewrite.This approach avoids prolonged downtime and budget surprises.
Analysis and Securing of the Existing Software and Hardware Environment
The first step is mapping all systems, inventorying technologies, and assessing critical dependencies. A thorough audit identifies fragility points and vulnerabilities.
Automated escalation scenarios and targeted penetration tests ensure patches can be applied without causing regressions.
This diagnosis then feeds into a prioritized roadmap, aligning business risks with immediate technical actions.
Gradual Integration of Modern Interfaces (IoT, Cloud, API)
Adding an API layer enables legacy systems to communicate with cloud platforms, analytics solutions, or IoT sensors. This layer acts as a bridge without modifying the core application.
Connectors can be deployed in parallel and validated on specific production segments before being rolled out across all lines.
This provides a gradual upskilling in new technologies without interrupting existing services.
Partial Version Upgrades and Modular Rewrite
Rather than overhauling the entire software, modular modernization first targets functionalities with the highest added value or risk. Each module can be extracted and rewritten as an open-source microservice.
This hybrid strategy preserves the validated functional scope and limits impacts on production schedules. It maximizes code reuse and accelerates adoption.
Over time, the system transforms into an ecosystem of independent, scalable, and maintainable components.
Long-Term Support and Product Vision
A lasting partnership includes performance monitoring, functional evolution, and obsolescence management. Rather than a one-off project, it becomes a product-driven approach to anticipate future needs.
Agile governance, involving CIOs, business stakeholders, and the service provider, ensures regular reviews and constant priority reassessment.
This collaborative framework offers the flexibility to adjust budgets, schedules, and resources according to results and emerging challenges.
Modernize Your Industrial Software in a Controlled and Sustainable Way
Obsolete industrial software is not inevitable. By stabilizing the existing system, documenting every element, and modernizing in a targeted way, you can combine operational continuity with progressive innovation. Integrating open interfaces and applying modular version upgrades form the foundation of a resilient architecture.
Agile approaches and partnering with an expert ensure a clear path, without jeopardizing production lines or causing unforeseen budget impacts.
At Edana, our experts support Swiss industrial companies through this transition, from the initial audit to the ongoing evolution of their software ecosystems.
