r/IndustrialAutomation

Not sure if it's just me, but the "bloat" in industrial tech is getting out of hand. Why does every piece of middleware feel like it was designed in 1998 and requires a dedicated server just to read a few tags?

I’ve spent the last few months building a tool (I call it Limen Edge). It’s basically a lightweight bridge (v1.1.1) that pulls PLC data and normalizes it into clean JSON/REST/gRPC.

The footprint is only 40.7MB, so it actually runs on tiny edge hardware without choking. My goal is to make the hardware invisible so I can use modern stacks without the any massive installation headache.

Curious if you guys are also looking for more modular, lightweight tools or are we just stuck with the legacy giants forever?

I’m five years into process automation mostly worked on DCS systems, heavy industries, functional descriptions, FAT, SAT, Commissioning and optimization. I’m lucky that througout my short career I have worked with very talented leads that had deep understanding of process, instruments and automation.

I have gained lot of knowledge from these leads and I think I have somewhat good level of skills to process automation. I know some configuration and can do some very basic level updates but I’m not a system engineer for sure.

The catch is, I have started in a new project with a new team and I’m very surprised how much they lack of deeper process and operator way of thinking. Am I in very nich field or is it with many automation engineers that they lack of the process knowledge and also other way around process people lack the automation knowledge?

I built a free PLC code explainer tool and want feedback from people who actually use this stuff.

You paste in code or upload a screenshot of a ladder diagram, pick your platform, and it gives you a plain-English explanation of what it does plus any issues it spots. Supports Siemens TIA Portal, Rockwell Studio 5000, and Omron Sysmac. There's also a mode toggle for programmer vs maintenance tech explanations.

Background: I work in industrial automation and got tired of inheriting undocumented programs. Wanted something that could give me a fast first-pass read on unfamiliar code. Built this to scratch that itch.

It's early. I'm specifically looking for:

- Cases where it gets the explanation wrong

- Platforms or code patterns it handles badly

- Features that would actually make you use it

https://plc-explainer.vercel.app/

No signup, no cost. Just try it with something real and tell me what happens.

worked on a factory workflow last year where the original goal sounded simple:

connect shop-floor data into the business system so production, inventory, and management reports could finally match.

the factory had older machines, some from the 90s/early 2000s, and a mix of retrofitted sensors. not a clean greenfield setup.

on paper it sounded like:

machine reading → production count → inventory update → report

in reality, the sensor data was the messy part.

some sensors would stop reporting for hours
some dumped a batch of readings later
some readings were duplicated
some machines had partial coverage
some operators still had to enter manual values
some numbers looked correct technically but did not match what the floor team saw

the ERP screens were not the hard part.

the hard part was deciding what data could be trusted, what needed to be flagged, and what should never automatically update stock without review.

a few things that helped:

separate raw sensor data from cleaned production data
show gaps instead of hiding them
dedupe readings before they touch inventory
allow manual correction with history
don’t let every sensor reading become truth immediately
build reports around confidence, not just totals
keep operators involved instead of forcing everything into automation

the biggest lesson for me was that industrial automation is not just connect machine to dashboard.

if the machine data is unreliable, the dashboard only makes bad data look official.

curious how others handle this in older plants.

when sensors/PLC/SCADA data is incomplete or inconsistent, do you usually clean it before it reaches ERP/MES, or do you pass everything through and handle exceptions later?