System Integration Challenges in UK Manufacturing
UK manufacturing has a particular integration problem. Decades of incremental investment, acquisitions, and equipment purchases from multiple vendors have created factory floors where Siemens PLCs sit alongside Allen-Bradley controllers, Mitsubishi robots talk to Omron sensors, and somewhere in the corner there is a Modbus RTU device from 1998 that nobody wants to touch but everyone depends on.
Getting all of this to work together is system integration, and it is a large part of what we do.
The Protocol Problem
The two dominant industrial Ethernet protocols in UK manufacturing are Profinet (Siemens ecosystem) and EtherNet/IP (Allen-Bradley ecosystem). Both run on standard Ethernet hardware, but they are not interoperable at the application layer. A Profinet device will not appear on an EtherNet/IP network without a gateway.
In a single-vendor plant, this is not an issue. In a mixed-vendor plant, which describes most facilities we work in, it creates a boundary that needs to be managed.
Options include:
Protocol gateways. Devices from manufacturers like HMS Anybus or Hilscher that translate between Profinet, EtherNet/IP, Modbus TCP, and other protocols. These work reliably for small numbers of data points. For large volumes of real-time data, they can introduce latency and become a single point of failure.
OPC-UA. An increasingly common solution for supervisory-level integration. OPC-UA provides a platform-independent communication layer that sits above the fieldbus level. Both Siemens and Allen-Bradley controllers support OPC-UA server functionality. It is well-suited for data exchange with SCADA, MES, and historian systems but is not a replacement for real-time fieldbus communication.
Dual-protocol devices. Some third-party equipment (drives, IO-Link masters, vision systems) supports both Profinet and EtherNet/IP. Specifying these where possible avoids the need for gateways.
Legacy Equipment
The most difficult integration challenges involve legacy equipment that predates industrial Ethernet entirely. Serial Modbus RTU, DeviceNet, Profibus DP, and even older proprietary protocols are still in active use across UK manufacturing.
Replacing the legacy equipment is sometimes the right answer, but not always. If a machine runs reliably and produces good parts, replacing its control system purely for network compatibility is hard to justify commercially.
In these cases, we install communication gateways at the legacy machine boundary. The machine continues to run its original control system, and the gateway presents its status and data to the modern network. This is pragmatic, cost-effective, and minimises the risk of disturbing a working system.
Consistent HMI and Data Architecture
A less obvious integration challenge is creating a consistent operator experience across equipment from different vendors. If every machine has a different HMI layout, different alarm structures, and different terminology, the operators spend more time interpreting screens than running production.
Where we are responsible for the line-level integration, we implement a common HMI standard across all stations. This means consistent screen layouts, standardised alarm codes and messages, and a common navigation structure. It takes more effort during engineering, but it reduces training time and improves fault response.
Data architecture follows the same principle. Production data from multiple machines needs to flow into a single database with consistent formatting, timestamps, and tag naming conventions. Defining this data structure at the specification stage avoids the painful process of trying to normalise inconsistent data after the fact.
Starting Point
The first step in any integration project is a thorough audit of the existing installed equipment: what is there, what protocol does it speak, what data does it provide, and what condition is it in. We have walked into sites where the existing network documentation was either incomplete or wrong.
You cannot integrate what you do not understand. The survey comes first.