22 n CONTROL ARCHITECTURES March 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com How single-controller systems can boost quality Seeing a modern factory floor in operation can be an amazing experience, with all of the robots, sensors and machines working together in a finely choreographed dance. It’s quite remarkable – until there's a malfunction. And therein lies something that has been frustrating quality engineers for decades. Here’s the situation: most factory operations need three or four different control systems that, historically, have barely talked to one another. It's like trying to conduct an orchestra where the violin, brass, and percussion sections have different sheet music. It might work most of the time, but what happens when quality issues crop up? Good luck figuring out what went wrong and where. Manufacturing has become so complex because, frankly, it had to. Customers want customised products delivered faster than ever, with zero defects. But this is where chaos can begin. Most organisations have been managing this complexity by piling on more systems. Need motion control? There's a controller for that. Safety monitoring? Another controller. Process control? Yep, another one. It’s a bit like having several project managers for the same project – it’s chaos waiting to happen. Whenever those systems need to share information, there's a delay. And in manufacturing, delays equal quality problems. If your motion controller is on one clock and your safety system is on another, tiny timing differences can lead to big quality issues. Think of it like buying an iPhone. Say you chose a 128GB model. At first, it works great, but over time as you download more apps and take more photos, you run out of space. Your phone is slower, more RAM is used, and you might have to offload apps to regain acceptable functionality. Then you really wish you planned ahead and bought a 256 or even a 512GB version. Another analogy: if you're trying to fill bottles on a high-speed line, and your filling system is not precisely synchronised with your capping system because they're on different controllers, you're in trouble. Some of the bottles will be overfilled, others underfilled, and some won't be capped correctly at all. Too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen, and all with different recipe books. Industry recognises the problems. Data published by the US National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in 2024 reports that “an overwhelming majority of manufacturers (86%) believe that the effective use of manufacturing data will be essential to their competitiveness. But to realise data’s potential, manufacturers must figure out how to organise and analyse their data effectively, ensure that it is trustworthy, and align their business strategy closely with their data strategy.” Furthermore, the NAM report also identified the main data integration challenges for manufacturers as: data that comes from different systems or in different formats (53%); data that is not easy to access (28%); and the lack of internal skills to analyse data effectively (28%). Rockwell’s 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report identified deploying and integrating new technology (21%) and balancing quality and profitability (21%) as being the biggest internal obstacles to growth in the coming 12 months. Everything's changing The good news is that the world of control systems has finally caught up with what we actually need. We’re not talking about Manufacturing quality demands are rising sharply, yet many facilities still rely on fragmented, multi-controller architectures that create delays, inconsistencies and costly inefficiencies. Dennis Wylie, principal product manager at Rockwell Automation, explains how next-generation single-controller systems are redefining what’s possible. The latest single-controller systems can integrate safety, security and communications with control functions, bringing many advantages to the factory floor
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