BDO’s latest Economic Engine survey found that 87 per cent of UK SME manufacturers are planning investments over the next two to five years, with more than a third intending to invest in advanced equipment and machinery. As production capacity expands, many businesses face a less visible challenge. New machinery is relatively straightforward to install, but building consistency across multiple facilities is often much harder. Here, Mark Richards, sales manager at Beckhoff UK, explains why standardising automation matters for growing manufacturers.
A manufacturer may have spent years refining processes at one site, only to discover that another facility uses different control systems, programming standards or maintenance procedures. The situation becomes even more complex following acquisitions, where plants often arrive with their own preferred suppliers and established ways of working.
Most organisations don’t plan to create a fragmented automation environment. It develops gradually. A production line is upgraded to solve a specific problem. A new machine arrives with its own control platform. An individual site adopts a solution that suits its immediate requirements. Over time, those decisions accumulate.
The effects of this are felt every day. Maintenance teams need expertise across several platforms. Spare parts inventories grow. Training becomes more demanding because operators moving between sites encounter different systems. Even relatively simple tasks, such as comparing production performance across facilities, can become difficult when information is collected in different ways.
These issues become more apparent when manufacturers try to replicate success. A packaging line that performs well in one factory should, in theory, be straightforward to reproduce elsewhere. In practice, engineering teams can find themselves adapting software, modifying communications protocols and overcoming compatibility issues that have little to do with the process itself.
That is why many manufacturers are beginning to view automation differently. Instead of treating each project as a standalone investment, they are establishing common standards that can be applied across the business. The objective is not to make every facility identical. Different products, customer requirements and production methods will always demand some variation. The goal is to create a consistent framework that allows those differences to sit on a common foundation.
For machine builders, this approach can simplify deployment. Reusable software libraries, common engineering practices and standard communication protocols reduce the amount of development work required when delivering similar systems to multiple sites. Meanwhile, end users benefit from greater consistency, which can make maintenance, operator training and future upgrades easier to manage.
The discussion extends beyond engineering efficiency. Manufacturers are under growing pressure to make better use of production data. Whether the objective is improving energy performance, introducing predictive maintenance or gaining greater visibility across operations, those initiatives depend on access to information that is structured consistently.
A site may have excellent data, but its value is limited if it cannot be compared with information from elsewhere in the organisation. Standardisation creates the conditions that allow manufacturers to understand performance across multiple facilities rather than viewing each one in isolation.
Technology choices play an important role here. Open automation platforms allow manufacturers to establish common approaches without restricting flexibility at the site level. For example, a shared software environment can support different machine types, while common communication standards help equipment exchange information more effectively. Technologies such as PC-based control, EtherCAT communication and TwinCAT software provide a consistent engineering environment that can be replicated across facilities while still accommodating local requirements.
As manufacturers continue investing in new equipment and expanding production capacity, the conversation around automation is changing. The focus is no longer solely on the performance of an individual machine or production line. Increasingly, attention is turning to how systems work together across an entire organisation.
For businesses operating across multiple facilities, standardisation is not about limiting choice. It is about removing unnecessary complexity. The manufacturers that gain the greatest value from future investments are likely to be those that can transfer knowledge, deploy technology and share information across sites without starting from scratch every time.
To learn more about creating a consistent automation strategy across multiple facilities, visit the Beckhoff website and explore its range of PC-based control, communication and software technologies.
