For decades, industrial automation followed a familiar pattern. Control systems were purchased as tightly bundled stacks — hardware, software, and lifecycle services from a single vendor — and then expected to last 15 to 25 years. That model worked when plants were relatively isolated, cybersecurity was peripheral, and the pace of computing innovation was slow.
That world no longer exists.
Today, industrial operators face a convergence of pressures: aging control estates, rising cybersecurity risk, rapid advances in computing and analytics, and growing expectations to continuously improve efficiency without increasing operational headcount. In that environment, the traditional proprietary control model has become a constraint rather than a safeguard.
This is why Open Process Automation (OPA) is not being driven by automation vendors, but by end users themselves.
A Problem Vendors Couldn’t Solve Incrementally
From the perspective of owner/operators, the limitations of legacy control systems are no longer theoretical — they are operational and economic.
As Don Bartusiak, Former Chief Engineer, Process Control at ExxonMobil, explains, the industry’s challenge isn’t a lack of innovation at the margins, but a structural ceiling:
“The transformational change that we’re seeking is not going to come from continuous incremental evolution of the technologies that we currently have.”
— Don Bartusiak, Former Chief Engineer, Process Control at ExxonMobil (Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard, ~03:13)
Proprietary control platforms were designed in an era before ubiquitous connectivity, modern cybersecurity threats, and cloud-scale computing. As a result, they tend to tightly couple hardware, software, and data models. That coupling makes even simple upgrades — like refreshing compute capability or adopting new analytics — costly, disruptive, and risky.
From an end-user perspective, this creates three compounding problems:
- Technology insertion is slow and constrained
New hardware or software capabilities can only be adopted on the vendor’s timeline, not when they deliver business value. - Lifecycle upgrades are expensive and disruptive
Upgrading one component often forces wholesale replacement or plant downtime. - Cybersecurity is bolted on, not designed in
Most legacy systems were never architected for today’s threat landscape.
These aren’t vendor execution issues. They are architectural issues — and they cannot be fixed with incremental product releases.
A Shared Set of Pain Points Across Industries
What makes OPA particularly notable is that it is being driven not by a single sector, but by a broad coalition of industries with very different operating models.
Julie Smith of DuPont describes the commonality succinctly:
“We all have common pain points in dealing with process automation systems.”
— Julie Smith, DuPont (Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard, ~13:31)
Those pain points recur across oil & gas, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pulp & paper, and other continuous-process industries:
- Multi-vendor environments created by decades of acquisitions and plant evolution
- Difficulty integrating best-in-class components
- Control systems running far beyond their intended lifecycle
- Cybersecurity becoming more critical — and harder — every year
Smith is particularly direct about security:
“Cybersecurity is becoming more important, but it’s becoming more difficult to do — and it’s an afterthought in most cases.”
— Julie Smith, DuPont (Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard, ~13:59)
In IT, these challenges were addressed years ago through open architectures, standard interfaces, and ecosystem-driven innovation. In OT, the same shift has been far slower — until now.
Why End Users Took the Lead
The Open Process Automation initiative did not emerge from a vendor roadmap. It emerged from end-user frustration with structural lock-in.
Bartusiak traces OPA’s origins back more than a decade, when ExxonMobil began exploring whether incremental improvement was even sufficient:
“We learned along the way that the transformational change we were seeking was going to require moving away from proprietary closed systems toward standards-based, open, interoperable technologies.”
— Don Bartusiak, Former Chief Engineer, Process Control at ExxonMobil (Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard, ~03:26)
Crucially, OPA was modeled on lessons learned in adjacent industries — telecommunications, avionics, and IT — where open architectures dramatically accelerated innovation while reducing vendor dependence.
Rather than defining a single new product, the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) focused on defining a reference architecture and a set of standards that would allow components from multiple vendors to interoperate safely and predictably.
This approach flips the traditional automation value chain:
- Vendors compete on components and capabilities
- End users retain control over architecture and lifecycle
- Innovation comes from ecosystems, not monopolies
Standards as an Enabler, Not an End Goal
OPA is sometimes misunderstood as “just another standard.” In reality, it is better described as a standard of standards — a framework that deliberately builds on proven technologies rather than reinventing them.
As Luis Duran of ABB explains:
“We are developing a standard of standards, driving toward open, secure, and interoperable products.”
— Luis Duran, ABB (Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard, ~11:39)
This approach matters for two reasons:
- Speed to adoption
Leveraging existing standards allows vendors and integrators to build compliant products faster. - Ecosystem confidence
Certification and conformance give end users confidence that components will work together as promised.
For end users, this shifts procurement from “who owns the whole stack?” to “which components deliver the most value — and can evolve independently?”
A Once-in-a-Generation Reset
Several end-user participants describe OPA as a rare opportunity to reset decades of accumulated technical debt.
A Shell representative framed it this way:
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make some basic choices on the road we’re going to follow for the next couple of years.”
— Shell representative, Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard (~19:01)
The urgency is not just technological. It is strategic.
Waiting carries its own risk. As Ron Bro of Wind River put it bluntly:
“Open interoperable systems for process automation are inevitable at this point. The train has already left the station.”
— Ron Bro, Wind River (Why End Users Are Driving the Open Process Automation Standard, ~23:40)
What This Means for the Industry
The shift toward Open Process Automation signals a broader change in how industrial automation will evolve:
- From vendor-controlled stacks to open, composable systems
- From infrequent, disruptive upgrades to continuous evolution
- From security as an afterthought to security by design
- From innovation bottlenecks to ecosystem-driven progress
Most importantly, it marks a shift in agency. End users are no longer waiting for vendors to define the future of control systems. They are defining it themselves.
In the posts that follow, we’ll explore what OPA changes architecturally, how ecosystems enable faster innovation, and what it takes to move from standards to production reality. But it starts here — with end users deciding that the old model no longer serves them.
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