Industrial Engineering Meets the Pace of the Digital World

The Time Horizon of Industrial Engineering

Professionals working in industrial engineering are accustomed to thinking in long timeframes. An industrial machine is not designed to meet the needs of the next two or three years, but to continue creating value throughout most of its operational life, often for twenty years or more. Structural robustness, component reliability, ease of maintenance and the possibility of modifying or upgrading the system over time have always been fundamental design principles, because they allow a machine to evolve alongside the production process without losing its effectiveness.

This design philosophy continues to prove its value today. It is not uncommon to find machines that were installed decades ago still operating reliably after targeted maintenance activities, the replacement of worn components or carefully planned revamping projects. The ability to design systems that remain effective over time is probably one of the strongest foundations of industrial engineering.

Over the past few years, however, while working both on new machinery and on existing plants requiring upgrades or modifications, we have begun to notice something that prompted us to reflect. Increasingly, machines are no longer simply combinations of mechanical, electrical and automation components. They now incorporate digital technologies that appear to evolve according to completely different timeframes from those that have traditionally defined industrial engineering.

When Timeframes Begin to Diverge

Looking at the broader picture, it becomes clear that modern machines now combine components designed to last for decades with technologies that evolve much more rapidly by their very nature. The mechanical structure retains a long lifecycle, while software, communication protocols, supervisory platforms, cloud services and data acquisition systems are updated at a pace that belongs to the world of information technology rather than mechanical engineering.

This difference is a natural consequence of technological progress. The real question arises when these different timescales extend beyond the machine itself and begin to affect the entire organization. A machine designed today may be ready to collect real-time data, communicate with enterprise management systems, support remote diagnostics and integrate with cloud platforms. Yet it will inevitably be installed in companies whose IT infrastructures have evolved over many years. Legacy software maintained because it remains perfectly integrated with existing workflows, heavily customized ERP systems, industrial PCs that have operated reliably for years without significant updates, and well-established procedures that nobody wishes to disrupt are all extremely common situations. Not because organizations resist innovation, but because every technological update introduces costs, validation activities and an unavoidable level of operational risk.

An Experience That Made Us Reflect

One particular project encouraged us to think more deeply about this topic. It involved the revamping of a fuel refining plant, where our work focused on remapping the process lines in preparation for restarting the facility after a prolonged shutdown. During the project, several control valves had to be replaced, and the chosen solution was to install components that were essentially identical to those that had been operating for more than twenty years, preserving the existing architecture.

This was by no means the wrong decision. On the contrary, it was probably the most appropriate choice given the project's objectives, operational constraints and economic requirements. What caught our attention, however, was a different question. We wondered whether such an intervention could also have represented the first step of a broader long-term strategy — one that involved introducing components already capable of supporting more advanced communication technologies while initially operating as direct replacements for the existing equipment. Such an approach could have enabled the gradual replacement of the remaining valves over time and, at a later stage, the modernization of the supervisory and control systems as well.

We do not know whether that would have been the best solution, and that is not the point. What this experience highlighted was that a revamping project can be viewed not only as a way to restore what already exists, but also as an opportunity to gradually prepare the future evolution of an industrial plant.

A New Perspective on Industrial Engineering

Observing situations like these has led us to develop a perspective that, at least from our point of view, offers an interesting way of interpreting what is happening. It is often said that industrial machines are becoming increasingly software-driven, but perhaps that definition only captures part of the picture. A machine remains fundamentally physical, and its performance still depends on the quality of its mechanical engineering. What is truly changing is the number of relationships that machine establishes with its surrounding environment. Today, machines collect data, communicate with information systems, interact with other equipment, enable remote support, feed analytical tools and become part of a much broader industrial ecosystem than before.

Perhaps the most significant transformation is therefore not that machines are becoming less mechanical, but that they are becoming increasingly connected systems. If this interpretation proves correct, many of the topics currently discussed separately — cybersecurity, predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence and system interoperability — could instead be understood as different consequences of the same underlying evolution. Not isolated trends, but different expressions of machines that are progressively becoming part of a digital environment evolving much faster than the machines themselves.

Designing the Transition

Perhaps this is the aspect that deserves the greatest attention. For decades, industrial engineering has focused on managing the lifespan of machines by designing for reliability, durability and maintainability. Today, however, a new responsibility seems to be emerging: anticipating how those same machines will coexist with a technological environment that continues to evolve throughout their operational life.

This does not mean chasing every new technology or replacing equipment that still performs its function effectively. Rather, it means asking whether today's engineering decisions should consider not only current requirements, but also the capacity of a machine to accommodate future technological changes gradually and sustainably.

The real issue is not which individual technology will become dominant over the coming years, but how industrial transitions will be planned. Every revamping project, every plant expansion and every component replacement can become an opportunity to prepare the next stage of evolution, building a coherent technological roadmap instead of simply reproducing what already exists. From this perspective, revamping becomes more than an upgrade activity; it becomes a strategic engineering tool for planning the long-term technological evolution of industrial assets, distributing investments, risks and change over time.

Final Thoughts

The reflections presented in this article are not intended to predict the future of industrial automation or to propose universally applicable solutions. They simply arise from situations we have encountered throughout our engineering work and from our attempt to understand their possible implications. Some of these ideas may eventually prove accurate, while others may become less relevant as the industry evolves. That is simply how every technical discipline progresses.

One change, however, already seems evident. For decades, industrial engineering has managed the lifespan of machines. Today, it must also begin to coexist with the pace of the digital world — a pace that is faster, more dynamic and far less predictable. Perhaps the real challenge of the coming years will not simply be designing machines capable of operating for twenty years, but designing machines capable of evolving throughout those twenty years. Not because we can predict the future, but because we know that the technological environment surrounding industrial machines will continue to change much faster than the machines themselves.