This article originally appeared on controlengeurope.com
Kim Fenrich, ABB Automation Global Product Marketing Manager, explains how these evolving DCS capabilities enable industrial operators to advance their digitalization strategies with minimal disruption, helping them achieve greater uptime, more agile operations, and improved sustainability.
Every plant owner shares the same ambition: to run industrial processes more efficiently, more reliably, and at lower cost, all while reducing hands-on intervention, cutting energy use, and minimizing waste. Achieving these goals, however, becomes increasingly challenging as operations grow in scale and complexity. One of the greatest hurdles is integrating new technologies into established automation environments without disrupting ongoing production.
Today's state-of-the-art DCS is designed to meet exactly these needs. Ability™ Symphony® Plus SDe Series enables plant owners to modernize their process control systems through targeted, incremental upgrades. This approach preserves existing infrastructure investments while avoiding the risks, costs, and operational downtime associated with a full, one‑time DCS replacement.
More devices, more data, more cyber threats, and less traditional engineering resources
Legacy automation systems are increasingly overwhelmed by the massive flow of process, control, and diagnostic data produced by today’s intelligent sensors, actuators, motors, valves, drives, and other connected devices. They were never designed for the density, speed, or complexity of modern industrial operations.
Meanwhile, plant managers face growing pressures: rising energy costs, decarbonization targets, and a constantly evolving cybersecurity landscape. At the same time, a significant skills gap is emerging as experienced engineers retire, taking critical expertise with them, while new entrants expect intuitive digital tools, modern interfaces, and mobile‑ready environments that mirror the technology they use every day.
The result: aging, inefficient DCS platforms are transforming from essential infrastructure into costly liabilities. Instead of enabling performance, they now pose risks to productivity, resilience, and profitability.
Making the business case for modernization
The need to modernize is clear for plant operators whose competitiveness is increasingly strained by aging control and automation systems. Upgrading decades‑old process control technology offers the promise of higher productivity, improved resilience and security, greater sustainability, and simplified maintenance: all at lower operating cost. Yet these long‑term gains often come with short‑term costs that many owners have been hesitant to take on.
Unlike enterprise IT, which is routinely refreshed every decade, a DCS often remains in service for 30 years or more. Over time, spare parts become scarce, the expertise required to maintain them dwindles, and the cost of supporting near‑obsolete hardware and software rises steeply.
Historically, modernization has meant painful downtime. Replacing controllers, I/O, cabinets, wiring, and field connections can put days or weeks of revenue at stake. And “big bang” replacements carry even higher risk: if the new system falters on day one, the resulting outages can be catastrophic. Faced with this, many plants retreat to the false safety of the status quo, even as their legacy DCS becomes a growing liability.
But standing still is now the riskiest choice of all. With rising pressures, shrinking expertise, and intensifying performance demands, outdated automation systems threaten reliability, profitability, and reputation. The cost of inaction is escalating, and the time to modernize is now.
Towards more autonomous operations and greater sustainability
The drive toward greater plant autonomy is accelerating - and the DCS is at the center of that shift. As industrial operations push for higher resilience and lower dependence on manual intervention, AI‑enabled DCS technology is becoming essential. By identifying issues earlier, reducing human‑induced errors, and speeding up decision‑making, intelligent systems take on routine tasks and free staff to focus on higher‑value strategic work. This is a critical step toward the long‑term vision of low‑touch or even “zero‑touch” operations.
Tomorrow's DCS will also be instrumental in advancing energy efficiency and sustainability. With embedded intelligence and more granular control of devices and processes, it can optimize energy use, protect equipment health, and adjust operations dynamically based on conditions and business priorities, all with far greater precision than legacy systems.
Next generation DCS hardware solutions like the Symphony® Plus SDe Series are purpose built to support this transition. They enable plant owners to modernize their existing control systems through incremental, low‑risk upgrades that preserve current infrastructure while introducing next‑level performance. With more efficient hardware, improved energy usage, and the ability to manage complex automation needs, the SDe Series unlocks meaningful gains in productivity, sustainability, and operational autonomy, all without the cost or disruption of a full DCS replacement.
Embracing openness, simplifying convergence
A major shift is underway in process automation as the industry moves from proprietary systems toward open standards and protocols. Openness is now essential as it accelerates innovation, expands interoperability, and enables suppliers and customers to benefit from broader ecosystems and economies of scale.
Open architectures also make IT/OT integration far more achievable. With standardized connectivity, high‑value applications, ranging from analytics and fleet asset management to condition‑based monitoring and predictive maintenance, can finally access the rich data coming from intelligent field devices. At the same time, advances in cloud and edge computing are making it easier to extract meaningful insights from massive volumes of process and control data.
Legacy DCS systems built in a proprietary era simply aren't designed for this level of flexibility or connectivity. Today’s push toward seamless IT/OT convergence is reflected in the newest generation of distributed control systems, led by the ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus SDe Series. The SDe platform brings modern, open‑standard capabilities to existing Symphony® Plus installations through low-risk , stepwise modernization, minimizing disruption to daily operations.
Its compact modular architecture delivers form-fit functional replacement for Symphony® Plus SD, Harmony, and INFI 90® systems, and supports both rack‑based and DIN‑rail mounting for greenfield projects or expansions. For existing plants, modernization becomes far simpler since field wiring, termination units and module cabling can be preserved during incremental upgrades. The SDe platform also introduces significantly improved energy efficiency compared to older hardware generations by reducing power consumption to help plant owners meet sustainability goals.
By enabling digitalization with minimal operational disruption, Symphony® Plus SDe gives plant owners a straightforward path to greater uptime, more agile operations, and simplifies innovation without the risks of a full DCS replacement..
Find out more about the benefits of futureproofing your operations with ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus SDe Series, the latest-generation modular distributed control system that delivers seamless, secure access to an extended digital ecosystem.
