Industrial automation and control software

The factory's control room, where a few operators watch and run the whole plant

In a soft-drink plant, bottles are filled, capped and labelled by machines, thousands every hour, with hardly a person touching them. A few operators sit in a control room and watch the whole plant on screens. The equipment and software that run a plant this way are called industrial automation.

The layers of automation. A plant is controlled in layers, from the machine up to the control room:

Sensors and actuators

Sensors measure things like temperature, pressure and flow. Actuators act on the machine: they open a valve or start a motor.

Programmable logic controllers, or PLCs

A PLC is a small, rugged computer beside the machine. It reads the sensors and switches the machine, many times a second. PLCs suit factories that make separate items, such as cars or bottles.

Distributed control systems, or DCS

Some plants run as one continuous flow, such as a refinery or a chemical plant. A DCS keeps the whole process steady, holding each temperature and pressure at its target value. That target is called a set point.

SCADA

short for supervisory control and data acquisition. It is the software through which operators watch and steer the plant from the control room.

The historian

It is a database that records every reading in the plant, with its time, for years. Engineers use it to find out what went wrong, and how to run the plant better.

How a plant is controlled in layers: sensors measure and actuators act on the machine, PLCs and the DCS sit beside the machines and read and switch them, and in the control room operators watch and steer through SCADA while the historian records every reading.

Who makes it, who buys it. The buyers are the owners of plants: carmakers, food companies, refineries, power plants and water works. The sellers are a handful of European, American and Japanese groups that have long dominated the field. Specialist firms called system integrators design each plant's control system and install it.

Why buyers rarely switch. A control system runs for 20 or 30 years. One maker's controllers work best with the same maker's software. And stopping a plant to replace its controls costs a great deal. So a plant usually stays with the maker it began with.

Security. Factory networks were once cut off from the internet. Now they are connected, so that data can flow to the rest of the company. That makes them a target for attackers, and securing them has become a business of its own.

Several of the large automation groups build their software in India.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

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Controllers, control systems and plant software

Controllers, control systems and plant software

Who sells to whom: automation makers such as Rockwell Automation, Yokogawa and Delta Electronics India, and plant software makers such as AVEVA and Velotic Software, sell through system integrators like Base Automation to the owners of plants, who stay with the maker they began with; Forescout Technologies and Wind River are covered mainly in other Market Segments.

The automation makers

Rockwell Automation

with engineers in Pune, Bengaluru and Delhi, makes the Allen-Bradley controllers that run many American factories. It also makes FactoryTalk, the software their operators use. Its Pune centre builds much of that software. Rockwell has the most job postings in this Market Segment.

Yokogawa

the Japanese maker of control systems for refineries and chemical plants, has engineers in Bengaluru. With its Indian arm, Yokogawa India Ltd, it builds its CENTUM control system and its plant software.

Delta Electronics India

with engineers in Bengaluru, makes drives, power supplies and automation equipment. A drive controls the speed of an electric motor. (More on it in Market Segment 40.1, Renewable energy and battery storage, in Industry Vertical 40, Energy and climate tech.)

Plant software

AVEVA

now part of Schneider Electric, with engineers in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, sells the PI System, a historian that records every reading in a plant. It also sells Wonderware and other SCADA software that runs operations. (More on Schneider Electric in the GCC collection.)

Velotic Software

with engineers in Hyderabad, sells Proficy, factory software that was once part of GE.

Building control systems for Indian plants

Base Automation

with engineers in Chennai, is a system integrator. It builds control systems for Indian plants and installs them.

Two companies covered mainly in other Market Segments protect the controllers and run them:

Forescout Technologies

with engineers in Pune, secures factory networks. (More on it in Market Segment 4.5, Network security, firewalls and SASE, in Industry Vertical 4, Cybersecurity.)

Wind River

with engineers in Bengaluru, makes VxWorks, the real-time operating system inside many machines. A real-time operating system always responds within a fixed, very short time, which a machine's controller needs. (More on it in Market Segment 5.2, Enterprise Linux and private cloud platforms, in Industry Vertical 5, Cloud providers and OS makers.)

The plant that runs itself.

Control systems have kept processes steady for decades. AI models now propose how to run a whole plant. They adjust set points to save energy, produce more and reduce wear. More and more, the operators approve what the AI proposes instead of steering the plant themselves. The automation groups are rebuilding their software as open systems, in which AI models can act. As those systems open up, keeping them secure becomes a larger question.

That is industrial automation: controllers beside the machines, control systems that keep a process steady, and software through which operators watch the plant. A handful of global groups lead it, and several build their software in India.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What manufacturing tech companies hire for.

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