Open Process Automation Consulting & Strategy

For an owner/operator considering Open Process Automation, the first question therefore should not be: Which O-PAS products should we buy?

It should be: What are we trying to achieve with Open Process Automation, where should we apply it, and how do we move from our current automation environment to that future state without creating unnecessary cost or operational risk?

That requires an Open Process Automation strategy.

Collaborative Systems Integration (CSI) provides Open Process Automation consulting and strategy services for industrial owner/operators and EPCs. CSI helps organizations translate business and lifecycle objectives into an O-PAS-based architecture, business case, migration roadmap and executable implementation strategy.

OPA introduces more choices. That is one of its potential advantages, but more choice also means more decisions become the owner's responsibility.

In a conventional proprietary DCS environment, the automation supplier makes many architectural decisions implicitly — determining much of the hardware environment, execution environment, engineering workflow, application environment, system-management architecture, upgrade path, compatibility model and lifecycle support model.

Open Process Automation changes that relationship. The owner can potentially choose components, applications and suppliers more independently. But the owner must first decide what architecture those choices are supposed to create.

Without that strategy, an organization can purchase technologies described as open while recreating many of the lifecycle dependencies it intended to eliminate.

1. Establish the Business Drivers

The first step is defining why the organization is considering OPA. CSI works with stakeholders across operations, automation, engineering, maintenance, reliability, cybersecurity, IT, procurement, capital projects and management. The objective is to establish a small number of measurable strategic outcomes.

For example, “Reduce dependency on large proprietary DCS migration events” is more useful than “Become more open.” The first can influence architecture, procurement and lifecycle decisions. The second cannot.

2. Assess the Current Automation Estate

OPA strategy must account for what already exists. For brownfield facilities, that can include decades of installed DCS infrastructure, PLC systems, instrumentation, applications, operator interfaces, historians, advanced control, packaged systems, engineering tools, interfaces, networks and operating procedures.

CSI assesses the existing environment to identify lifecycle risks, obsolescence, proprietary dependencies, application dependencies, migration constraints, high-value modernization opportunities, and systems that should remain unchanged. The objective is not to find everything that can be replaced. It is to determine where architectural change creates enough value to justify intervention.

3. Define the Target OPA Architecture

Once the objectives and current state are understood, the target architecture can be developed. The architecture should define the required relationships between field devices, Distributed Control Nodes (DCNs), Open Process Automation Units (OPUs), Advanced Compute Devices, control applications, system services, operator-facing applications, existing automation systems, and external plant and enterprise systems.

The target architecture should also establish component boundaries, information interfaces, application deployment, portability requirements, system-management responsibilities, cybersecurity requirements, supplier boundaries and lifecycle ownership. The architecture should be vendor-neutral enough to preserve competitive choice while detailed enough to support implementation.

4. Define the Application Strategy

One of the most consequential questions is what happens to the owner's control applications. Those applications represent years of engineering knowledge and operating experience. For most industrial organizations, IEC 61131 remains the practical primary control-application model.

The strategy should therefore address how IEC 61131 applications can be deployed, managed and preserved across an open architecture without unnecessarily binding the application intellectual property to proprietary execution hardware. Questions include which existing applications should be preserved, which should be redesigned, what runtime requirements apply, what constitutes acceptable portability, how portability will be tested, who owns source code and configuration, what application artifacts must be retained, and how applications will be managed through their lifecycle. Application strategy should be established before large-scale application engineering begins.

5. Develop the Brownfield Migration Strategy

For most existing facilities, OPA will be a journey rather than a replacement event. That makes coexistence fundamental. A migration strategy should determine what remains on the existing DCS, where OPA is introduced first, how new and existing systems interact, which lifecycle events create natural migration opportunities, how applications transition, how operational risk is controlled, and what the rollback strategy is.

Possible entry points can include plant expansions, new process units, utility systems, packaged equipment, advanced applications, obsolete control-system areas, or other bounded modernization opportunities. The correct entry point depends on the facility.

6. Build the Business Case

Architecture alone does not justify investment. The strategy should connect technical change to economic value. CSI's OPA business-case methodology compares the expected lifecycle economics of the existing automation strategy with the proposed OPA strategy — considering initial investment, engineering, maintenance, hardware refresh, application migration, modernization, production disruption, competitive sourcing, lifecycle support and applicable operational benefits.

The objective is to calculate whether the proposed strategy creates sufficient value to justify the investment and risk.

7. Define the Pilot

A pilot should not simply prove that OPA technology works — the O-PAS ecosystem already exists. A useful owner/operator pilot should reduce uncertainty around decisions required for broader deployment: can applications be deployed as intended, can the selected components interoperate, what engineering effort is actually required, what responsibilities emerge between suppliers, how should FAT be structured, what operational skills are required, what does component replacement look like, and which assumptions in the business case are valid.

The pilot should therefore have explicit learning objectives and acceptance criteria. Its output is evidence for the next investment decision.

8. Establish the Supplier and Integration Model

OPA changes supplier relationships. The strategy should define the roles of the owner/operator (owns the requirements, architecture objectives and lifecycle outcomes), the EPC (may manage overall engineering, procurement, construction and project execution), the OPA system integrator (turns the architecture and requirements into an integrated, verified operating system), and automation and technology suppliers (provide components, software and supporting technology).

These responsibilities should be established before procurement. Otherwise, the architecture can become a by-product of supplier selection.

9. Define Procurement and Acceptance Requirements

OPA strategy must eventually influence procurement. If it does not, it remains an architecture exercise. The strategy should establish how future projects specify applicable O-PAS requirements, required profiles, application portability, component interfaces, supplier responsibilities, interoperability, documentation, configuration ownership, FAT, acceptance evidence and lifecycle replacement requirements.

This becomes particularly important for EPC projects. An EPC cannot accurately estimate an owner's O-PAS requirement if the required architecture, integration scope and acceptance criteria remain undefined.

10. Build the Implementation Roadmap

The final strategy should translate the target architecture into a sequence of decisions and projects. A typical roadmap might look like:

Stage 1 — Strategy → Stage 2 — Business Case → Stage 3 — Pilot → Stage 4 — Initial Production Deployment → Stage 5 — Standards and Procurement → Stage 6 — Incremental Modernization

This creates an investment pathway rather than requiring a commitment to a plant-wide transformation at the beginning.

A greenfield project offers more architectural freedom, but it creates a different risk. The project organization is under pressure to control CAPEX, schedule and technical risk. Without a clearly defined OPA strategy, conventional automation decisions can become embedded early in FEED and procurement.

For greenfield projects, OPA requirements should therefore be established early enough to influence FEED, control-system architecture, EPC estimating, supplier qualification, application strategy, procurement packages, FAT requirements and lifecycle ownership. The later OPA requirements enter the project, the more expensive they can become to implement.

Technology suppliers are important participants in OPA. They understand their products, roadmaps, engineering environments and implementation capabilities better than anyone else. They should be involved.

But the owner should retain control over the strategy. A supplier's natural question is: “How can our products satisfy this requirement?” The owner's strategic question is broader: “What requirements and architecture best protect our operational and lifecycle objectives?”

Those are different questions. An independent strategy phase establishes the owner's requirements before individual products begin shaping the answer.

1. Why the organization is considering OPA;
2. Where OPA could create value;
3. Which existing systems create the strongest lifecycle drivers;
4. What the initial target architecture could look like;
5. Where a pilot or first deployment makes sense;
6. What information is required for the business case; and
7. What decisions should be made next.

The immediate deliverable is clarity. The organization should know whether to proceed, where to focus and what evidence it needs before making a larger commitment.