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Innovation, quality, and productivity today rely on software systems often designed decades ago. Despite their historical resilience, these custom applications struggle to accommodate new requirements, expose the company to security vulnerabilities, and incur growing maintenance costs. Tackling the modernization of this ecosystem without halting production lines or compromising manufacturing performance poses a real challenge for CIOs and business leaders. This article lays out a pragmatic roadmap structured around stabilization, documentation, targeted modernization, and progressive integration. At each step, the goal is to maintain operational continuity while preparing the industrial ecosystem for future challenges.
Why Your Industrial Software Is Becoming a Bottleneck for Your 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 that are uncommon today and difficult to evolve. This software obsolescence complicates the search for qualified profiles and lengthens incident resolution times. When a vulnerability is identified, the patch may require a partial overhaul due to a lack of documentation or automated tests.
These inherited technology choices hinder the adoption of modern, high-performance solutions. Adding new features becomes a minefield, with each modification demanding 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++ MES over twenty years old. Each update took more than three weeks and exposed the production line to intermediate failures. This finding led to documenting the existing system before any modernization operation.
Security Vulnerabilities and Single-Expert Dependency
When all expertise resides in the mind of a lone developer or long-term contractor, security patches become critical. An unplanned departure can stall maintenance and leave the system exposed to attacks.
Unpatched vulnerabilities accumulate, whether they’re backdoors, injection points, or unsupported third-party components. The slightest incident can paralyze the entire production, leading to costly downtime and internal investigations.
The lack of redundancy in technical knowledge increases operational risk, since the loss of the key resource constitutes a single point of failure.
Lack of Integration with Modern Tools
Factory software designed 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 into operations.
Without IoT or cloud integration, data collection relies on manual exports or homegrown scripts that are unreliable and hard to maintain. Reporting often remains static, without proactive alerts or history-based forecasting.
For example, a Swiss material processing company performed manual CSV exports every month to track its quality indicators. 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 prevent production stoppages. From inventory management to quality control modules, each workflow poses specific challenges. The priority is to identify breaking points before they materialize.
Production Management and Quality Control Software
These systems orchestrate machine scheduling, operator assignments, and batch traceability. Any latency or malfunction causes cascading delays.
The quality control integrated into these systems must be able to trigger an immediate alert to stop the line or isolate a non-conforming batch. Without this responsiveness, the risk of serial defects increases.
For example, a manufacturer of measuring instruments used an embedded control module in its initial ERP, but without dynamic thresholds. Any anomaly went without automatic action, producing costly rejects until manual review 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 late update to the equipment tracking system can lead to untimely interventions or, conversely, undetected breakdowns. The cost of an unplanned stoppage can run into several thousand francs per hour.
Modern solutions integrate IoT sensors and generate automated reports, reducing manual interventions and improving equipment availability rates.
Inventory and Logistics Management Tools
Tracking supplies, consumption, and rotations requires seamless transmission 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 performed a daily manual inventory. Faced with frequent discrepancies, it planned excessive orders, impacting cash flow and causing delivery delays.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
What Makes Industrial Software So Special (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 for a short duration. Each update must rely on failover or redundancy mechanisms to avoid any downtime.
Unlike traditional web applications, an unavailable microservice can stop an entire manufacturing line. Robustness and resilience are therefore at the heart of the architecture.
Test environments must faithfully replicate production configuration to validate patches before going live.
Impossibility of Halting Production for Updates
Unlike regular maintenance windows, factories often lack slack periods to deploy changes. Evolution must happen live, without shutdowns.
Blue-green deployments or canary releases allow for progressive and reversible change introduction. This strategy limits risks but requires precise orchestration.
Poor synchronization can cause version inconsistencies and cascading blockages that are more difficult to resolve in real time.
Machine Interface Specificity and Data Flows
Each piece of equipment uses a specific protocol or fieldbus (Profinet, OPC UA, Modbus…). Data flows are often proprietary and don’t support modern standards.
Interfacing requires developing custom adapters while ensuring latency and reliability meet shop floor requirements.
A poorly managed conversion can lead to machine misconfiguration errors, causing rejects or mechanical malfunctions.
Industry-Specific Regulatory Compliance
Pharmaceutical, food, or aerospace industries must adhere to ISO, FDA, or EN standards. Software must incorporate 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 freezes, product recalls, or severe penalties.
Working with a Specialized Partner: A Methodology to Modernize Software Without Rewriting Everything
Working with an industrial software expert ensures a structured, phased approach that minimizes risks. The goal is to extend and secure the existing system before considering a full rewrite. This approach avoids prolonged downtime and unexpected budget surprises.
Analysis and Securing of the Existing Software and Hardware Environment
The first step is to map all systems, inventory technologies, and assess 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 diagnostic feeds a prioritized roadmap that aligns business risks with immediate technical actions.
Progressive Integration of Modern Interfaces (IoT, Cloud, API)
Integrating an API layer allows legacy systems to communicate with cloud platforms, analytics solutions, or IoT sensors. This layer acts as a bridge without modifying the core application.
The connectors can be deployed in parallel and validated on specific production segments before being rolled out across all lines.
This provides a gradual skill ramp-up on new technologies without interrupting the existing service.
Partial Upgrades and Modular Rewrites
Rather than overhauling all software, the modular modernization approach initially targets the highest-value or highest-risk features. 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.
Eventually, the system evolves into an ecosystem of independent, scalable, and maintainable components.
Long-Term Support and Product Vision
A lasting partnership includes performance metric tracking, functional evolution, and obsolescence management. Rather than a one-off project, it’s a product-based approach to anticipate future needs.
Agile governance, bringing together IT, business, and the service provider, ensures regular reviews and constant reprioritization.
This collaborative framework provides the flexibility to adjust budgets, schedules, and resources based on results and new challenges.
Modernize Your Industrial Software in a Controlled and Sustainable Manner
Obsolete industrial software is not inevitable. By stabilizing the existing system, documenting every element, and modernizing in a targeted way, it is possible to combine operational continuity with gradual innovation. Integrating open interfaces and adopting modular upgrades form the foundation of a resilient architecture.
Agile approaches and partnering with an expert guarantee a clear path without jeopardizing production lines or incurring unexpected budget impacts.
At Edana, our experts support Swiss industrial companies in this transition, from initial audit to continuous evolution of the software ecosystem.
