As Manufacturing Equipment Reaches End Of Life, AI Offers A New Path Forward

InnovationAs Manufacturing Equipment Reaches End Of Life, AI Offers A New Path ForwardByFabio Caversan,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)May 12, 2026, 09:15am EDTFabio Caversan is the Global Chief Technology Officer at Stefanini, driving new product offerings and digital transformation. getty​Walk the floor of almost any major manufacturing facility, and you will find a contradiction hiding in plain view. The products coming off the line represent the latest in engineering and materials science, yet the control systems governing those lines were, in many cases, installed before the first iPhone shipped. They run on operating systems that have since been abandoned, programmed in outdated languages and are held together by spare parts that are increasingly difficult to find.Between 50% and 70% of industrial control systems worldwide have crossed or are approaching the 20-year mark. Unplanned downtime now costs manufacturers an average of $260,000 per hour, with capital-intensive sectors absorbing losses well into the millions. Legacy platforms were not designed in line with modern cybersecurity protections, leaving them vulnerable to intrusions like ransomware. Because these older architectures cannot interface with IIoT infrastructure or advanced analytics tools, manufacturers may also not be able to convert plant data into operational intelligence.​Rewriting The Migration PlaybookThe traditional path for upgrading a legacy control system has always been manual, slow and expensive. Engineers study the existing code running a PLC or SCADA system, interpret what each instruction does and rewrite the entire program for the target platform. A large facility with hundreds of control points can burn through months of engineering time on conversion alone, and the risk of introducing errors during manual translation...