ABB has introduced its Automation Extended program, described as a strategic evolution of its distributed control systems (DCS), designed to help industries modernise without disruption.
Building on ABB’s long-standing leadership with the world’s largest DCS installed base and vision in process automation, Automation Extended “outlines how future automation capabilities can be introduced progressively – preserving system integrity while enabling the flexibility, scalability and efficiency needed for the next era of industrial operations.”
Industrial operations today face volatile markets, cyber security challenges, regulatory pressures and a rapidly changing workforce. ABB’s Automation Extended “addresses these realities by enabling innovation with agility and pace without disruption to production, supporting advanced analytics and IoT integration, and simplifying operations for diverse skill levels.”
ABB says Automation Extended will support its customers in the mining industry to further enhance resilience and growth in safety, productivity and sustainability. “It will pave the road to autonomy, leveraging AI technologies and directly addressing the industry’s needs to retain, share and augment the knowledge of the workforce. It will fuel the energy transition and enable remote operations while providing the operator with an immersive experience and contextualised information and support, to ensure operator effectiveness and highest plant productivity and reliability.”
It comes as independently researched figures in ABB’s Mining’s Moment survey show that 77% of mining leaders see integrated electrification, automation and digitalisation as the key enablers of a sustainable transformation in the industry. Automation Extended with its approach to an open ecosystem, “pays tribute to the needs of the mining industry to connect systems and data across silos, enabling interoperability of solutions from mine to port.”
Across industries, ABB says operators can continue to rely on its trusted systems such as ABB Ability
System 800xA®, ABB Ability Symphony® Plus and ABB Freelance, while introducing new technologies progressively and without operational interruption. This approach provides a structured, low risk path to modernisation, preserving continuity while enabling innovation.
“In industries we serve – many operating large and complex infrastructures that deliver essential resources – our customers rely on modernisation without disruption,” said Peter Terwiesch, President, ABB’s Automation business area. “Automation Extended delivers exactly that: bringing future-ready capabilities into the systems they know and trust, with security and interoperability at the core.”
The Automation Extended program is implemented through a modern, open and modular environment designed for interoperability, scalability and seamless integration across industrial domains. Based on separation of concerns principles, the automation ecosystem includes two distinct yet securely interconnected environments:
- The control environment, a software‑defined domain that ensures robust, reliable and deterministic control for critical processes.
- The digital environment, securely connected to the control layer, enabling advanced applications, edge intelligence and real‑time analytics. This space leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for decision support without disturbing proven control structures.
A single, unified and comprehensive automation service approach for ecosystem lifecycle management and optimisation is applied for the management and maintenance of these diverse technological environments.
By integrating new technologies such as an Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) backbone and a Cloud-Native Architecture for managing both environments – leveraging containerisation, orchestration and modular services – ABB says the ecosystem enables a broad spectrum of enhancements. These range from proactively detecting and correcting process anomalies to optimising maintenance strategies through continuous condition monitoring of critical assets, and elevating engineering with efficient modular approaches ready for deployment across diverse hardware platforms. This architecture delivers scalability and agility while ensuring robust performance.
Access to Automation Extended will be enabled through the next releases of ABB Ability System 800xA®, ABB Ability Symphony® Plus and ABB Freelance process automation systems.
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