UniversalAutomation.org - Unlock your automation software!

Join the team
changing the game!

For far too long proprietary automation systems have been restricting innovation. Joining UniversalAutomation.org means becoming part of a one-of-a-kind organization sharing a common technology that will unleash innovation by enabling application portability.

What is universal automation?

It is the combination of two parts:

A technology enabler based on the IEC 61499 standard which defines how to design distributed applications using “plug and produce” software components which are independent from the hardware on which they execute.

A community of automation users, technology vendors and academics organized around an independent non-profit association: UniversalAutomation.org.

UniversalAutomation.org is open to new members willing to change the game of automation.

Why join us?

Members of UniversalAutomation.org get access to the next generation of universal automation technology, working collaboratively within an ecosystem of innovative technology vendors and thought-leading users.

Plug & Produce

Application Portability & Interoperability

IT/OT Convergence

A new automation paradigm is required!

Traditional Automation world

Difficult

Proprietary Control Node

Vendor 1

Vendor 2

Vendor 3

Vendor 4

Locked to a vendor
No portability & limited application interoperability
Difficult to interface with IT systems
Labor-intensive to engineer & operate
Prevents innovation & evolution of installed base

Easy

Universal Automation Control Node

Controller

Runtime

Vendor 1

PLC

Controller

Runtime

Vendor 2

DCS

Controller

Runtime

Vendor 3

Instruments Actuators

Controller

Runtime

Vendor 4

Edge Computers

More cost-effective – write once, re-use regardless of vendor
More reliable & safer using proven-in-use, reusable software libraries
Software can be incrementally improved over the lifecycle
End-of-life proof – re-use software, even when automation hardware is obsolete
Embed & reuse IP to protect competitive edge or to get better ROI on increasing software investment

They joined us

Stratus, a proud member of UniversalAutomation.org, is committed to advancing open, vendor-independent automation. By creating open ecosystems, UniversalAutomation.org enables users to choose the best hardware and software combinations for optimal performance. The Universal Automation Open approach allows users the ability to pair their software with a hardware platform that brings reliability, security, and simplicity to the forefront. With built-in virtualization, OT supportability, high availability and fault-tolerance, Stratus platforms enable users to deploy UAO projects with confidence in their mission critical operations. By aligning with UniversalAutomation.org, Stratus empowers businesses to scale, innovate, and accelerate time to market with reliable, secure solutions across multi-vendor environments.

Rudy de Anda

Head of Strategic Alliances

There is a huge room for improvement on the way runtimes are managed and orchestrated today. By joining UAO we aim to contribute to make large runtime deployments more scalable and secure through modern Edge Management functions. Our participation in UAO represents another significant step in our commitment to delivering open and flexible solutions based on industry standards, enabling industrial organizations to innovate more rapidly and with reduced risk.

David Purón

CEO and Co-founder at Barbara

I joined UAO because by being open, by being an international standard, by being already supported by quite a certain number of relevant companies, it paves the way for a new generation of not just automation systems, but a new way of conceiving automation systems. Because in the end it leaves behind the problem of hardware and unleashes the power of software, which has not yet happened in automation.

Franco Cavadini

Chief Technical Officer

We want to have an open system because our customers ask for it. It will also make our life much easier if there's only one product with one interface that basically works with every controller. You can run the application on our system. You can also use another system. You can mix and match different systems. So literally a part of the system can be installed here and the other part can be installed in Australia and it will work together. Most of our customers in process automation are pretty conservative, they never want to change a running system. But now, we see a new generation coming up that is used to new technologies. They are open to test and try these new functionalities and I think most of them pretty well understand the advantages on this. I'm doing this for 20 years now and I think over the years, this is the most exciting change.

Andre Fritsch

Senior Product Manager

We joined UAO because we strongly believe that we have to decouple the application from the hardware. The value of our automation is not in the hardware and (yet today) we design every plant in hardware-centric way. That is no longer possible with the regional complexities of cyber security, more maintenance, more complex software requirements. On our current path towards Industry 4.0 that hardware-centric approach no longer good. So in short, we must decouple hardware & software to make sure that we are able to survive as an industry in Europe.

Dominic de Kerf

Plant Systems and Controls COE

Advantech is growing really fast and I believe if you want to keep on growing in the future, you need to be able to innovate. And when I see the universal automation approach, it is exactly the way of innovation we need to go with. Who is inside Universal Automation? You have institutions, you have academics, you have OEMs, manufacturers and users. This means that you have all the voices of the market on one platform, no one is pushing in one direction. We are just finding the way to grow together to the next level. Universal Automation is really the concept you want to push today. In the past there was one piece of hardware with one task, but we have to move on, we have to evolve. The evolution is that the hardware can have different kinds of software and everything can run on top of it. The hardware itself is not so important anymore.

Marco Zampolli

Industrial IoT Product Sales Director

We operate several thousand third-party installations, so we find ourselves with a large volume of equipment from different brands. This requires great complexity of skills to maintain them. This is why the association’s approach interests us greatly: to simplify the multi-vendor complexity. Pooling the skills of our employees on a limited number of platforms is a guarantee of operational efficiency, and a vector of success for the dissemination of standards.

Michel Arroyo

Operations and Performance Director

I like to have a system that is based on an open standard instead of a system that is defined by just one vendor. So for us, 61499 is one way of opening up our system and make it future ready and that's why we joined the UAO. Today there are a lot of obsolescence issues in in the industry so you can end up in a corner where it's hard to move out from. Instead, by using an open standard, you’re having the opportunity to select the best vendor. A standard is always good but it's even better to also have an implementation of a standard. And that’s exactly what UAO provides. It's not an open-source, but a guarded-source-community. And that's very important because then there is someone behind it to make sure that the quality of the software is good.

Sølve Raaen

Principal Architect OT

On our hydroelectric power plants, we have technology from the 1950s that we need to modernize it. UAO’s technology will allow us to decouple software from hardware and create portable libraries of functions to replicate across our assets, independent of the automation hardware. We want to completely change our approach, focusing on functions rather than hardware constraints. This functional approach from design to implementation is a revolution for us. Our automation teams were quickly impressed with this new approach and have understood it very quickly.

Laurent Bacon

Head of Industrial Information and Control

When we came to Universal Automation Organisation, they offered us a stable solution with the IEC 61499 standard as the future of open automation. This standard eliminates the need for code conversion. This means that customers can use only one programming for our PLCs on different machines. This also helps them to increase their efficiency, reduce their costs and run more stable machines. We are very optimistic about our cooperation with Universal Automation because there are so many different types of machines and PLCs in China, and it takes a lot of engineering to make different machines talk to each other. We joined this ecosystem to make every machine and PLC talk in one standard. In fact, we are the first local company in China to offer large scale IEC 61499 compliant hardware.

Raphael Xiong

Sales Manager

Open Automation technologies like UAO’s will allow us to deliver innovative automation systems faster and at lower cost. That enables more efficient manufacturing and faster time to market for green solutions. We plan to starting using IEC 61499 to innovate on top of existing infrastructure and technology as our first use cases. Longer term, more efficient integration of technology from different OEM machine and automation suppliers will have a major positive impact. To those considering joining UAO, don’t join if you like being locked into expensive proprietary PLC platforms and enjoy using the same old thing!

David Campain

Global Product Manager, Process Control Systems

Wood is excited to be part of defining the future of automation and transforming profitability and productivity for the customers in our industrial markets. UniversalAutomation.org technology will enable business innovation, increase digital adoption and agility with its open, interoperable and portable solutions- building business resiliency and empowering our clients to be future-ready.

German Carmona

Global President of Wood’s Digital Consulting business

For Belden, Universal Automation means two things. First, the opportunity to participate in the development of this open architecture and benefit from the common technology. Second, we are part of a great community that supports us with new ideas and best practices. A major advantage of Universal Automation is the scalability of a distributed architecture with multiple components, compared to a monolithic architecture that relies on a single component. The main advantage of UAO is that it is truly innovative, as opposed to the monolithic approaches that have been implemented in the past. It allows more code reuse and gives software developers used to object-oriented languages the opportunity to participate in the programming of automation systems.

Jürgen Michielsen

Director Strategy and Platform modeling

We are excited to be part of UniversalAutomation.org because it promises to be a complete game changer. It opens up a new world of possibilities for organisations like ours. Unlocking valuable data currently buried in proprietary systems, making the connectivity and deployment of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence quick and simple. As part of UniversalAutomation.org we are actively collaborating with and supporting like-minded organisations to create an exciting new open era in operations and automation.

Valeriy Vyatkin

Professor of Electrical Engineering at Aalto University

I think now is a great time to disrupt the industry, really become hardware agnostic and let the end user decide what hardware they want to use. Customers can basically choose the hardware they want using just one automation platform, so they become very versatile and are not bound to one particular vendor. Universal Automation provides precisely the level of flexibility that a competitive and sustainable industry requires. For our customers, this is exactly what they are looking for today.

Nicholas Holland

Managing Director - EMEA Broad Market

The creation of UniversalAutomation.org is the dawn of a new era within automation technology; over the course of the next five years, it will create a sea change for the future of automation software development. We are delighted to be a part of UniversalAutomation.org, driving the development of a “plug and produce” system which will help the industry keep up with the increasing demands of flexible manufacturing. There is no doubt that as members continue to join the organization and reap the benefits of collaboration and openness, that industry-wide change will follow.

Dmitrii Drozdov

Chief Technology Officer at Flexbridge

The change to Universal Automation is really enabling the industries of the future. Business data, coming from the automation level, is the foundation to make much more conscious decisions. Universal Automation is an ideal prerequisite for efficiently obtaining this data and performing valuable analyses. Universal Automation of course is much closer to the IT-thinking and therefore young talents are more attracted to work in this environment.

Barbara Frei

Executive Vice President Industrial Automation

Michel Arroyo - Veolia - Operations and Performance Director

News

23.05.2025

First-rate additions to the UniversalAutomation.org management committee

Event

09.04.2025

IEEE ETFA 2025

Event

31.03.2025

IEEE ISSIA 2025

UniversalAutomation.org Privacy notice

We commit to serve you with care, consideration, and respect and to protect your privacy and personal information.

1 - Who is in charge of data processing?

UniversalAutomation.org is responsible for your personal data. The UniversalAutomation.org official address is Havenlaan 86C, box 204, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. UniversalAutomation.org is organized as an international, non-profit organization.

2 - What types of personal information do we process?

The personal data we collect may include:

Contact information, such as your name, job title, postal address, including your home address, where you have provided this to us, business address, telephone number, mobile phone number, fax number and email address;
Payment data, such as data necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention, including credit/debit card numbers, security code numbers and other related billing information;
Further business information necessarily processed in a committee or participation relationship with UniversalAutomation.org or voluntarily provided by you, such as instructions given, payments made, requests and projects;
Your password for the UniversalAutomation.org website or other password protected platforms or services, where you have one;
Information collected from publicly available resources;
Special categories of personal data. In connection with the registration for and provision of access to an event or seminar, we may ask for information about your health for the purpose of identifying and being considerate of any disabilities or special dietary requirements you may have. Any use of such information is based on your consent. If you do not provide any such information about disabilities or special dietary requirements, we will not be able to take any respective precautions;
Other personal data regarding your preferences where it is relevant to the standardization services that we provide. From time to time, it may include personal data about your membership of a professional or trade association or union, health personal data, details of dietary preferences when relevant to events to which we invite you and details of any criminal record you may have.

3 - How do we collect your personal data?

We may collect personal data about you in a number of circumstances, including

When you or your organization seek technical documents or brochures;
When you or your organization browse, make an enquiry or otherwise interact on our website;
When you attend a seminar or another UniversalAutomation.org event or sign up to receive personal data from us; or
When you or your organization offer to provide or provide services to us. In some circumstances, we collect personal data about you from a third-party source. For example, we may collect personal data from your organization, other organizations with whom you have dealings, government agencies, an information or service provider or from a publicly available record.

4 - Are you required to provide personal data?

As a general principle, you will provide us with your personal data entirely voluntarily; there are generally no detrimental effects for you if you choose not to consent or to provide personal data. However, there are circumstances in which UniversalAutomation.org cannot take action without certain of your personal data, for example because this personal data is required to process your instructions or orders, provide you with access to a web offering or newsletter or to carry out a legally required compliance screening. In these cases, it will unfortunately not be possible for us to provide you with what you request without the relevant personal data and we will notify you accordingly.

5 - For which purposes will we us your personal data?

We may use your personal data for the following purposes only (“Permitted Purposes“):

Providing services or things you may have requested, including on-line, technology services or solutions as instructed or requested by you or your organization;
Managing and administering your or your organization’s business relationship with UniversalAutomation.org, including processing payments, accounting, auditing, billing and collection, support services;
Compliance with our legal obligations (such as record keeping obligations), compliance screening or recording obligations (e.g. under antitrust laws, export laws, trade sanction and embargo laws, for anti-money laundering, financial and credit check and fraud and crime prevention and detection purposes), which may include automated checks of your contact data or other information you provide about your identity against applicable sanctioned-party lists and contacting you to confirm your identity in case of a potential match or recording interaction with you which may be relevant for compliance purposes;
To analyze and improve our services and communications to you;
Protecting the security of and managing access to our premises, IT and communication systems, online platforms, websites and other systems, preventing and detecting security threats, fraud or other criminal or malicious activities;
For insurance purposes;
For monitoring and assessing compliance with our policies and standards;
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and requests anywhere in the world, including reporting to and/or being audited by national and international regulatory bodies;
To comply with court orders and exercises and/or defend our legal rights; and For any purpose related and/or ancillary to any of the above or any other purpose for which your personal data was provided to us. Where you have expressly given us your consent, we may process your personal data also for the following purposes:
Communicating with you through the channels you have approved to keep you up to date on the latest technology and marketing developments, announcements, and other information about UniversalAutomation.org services, products and technologies (including newsletters and other information) as well as UniversalAutomation.org events and projects;
Customer surveys, marketing campaigns, market analysis, contests or other promotional activities or events; or
Collecting information about your preferences to create a user profile to personalize and foster the quality of our communication and interaction with you (for example, by way of newsletter tracking or website analytics). With regard to marketing-related communication, we will – where legally required – only provide you with such information after you have opted in and provide you the opportunity to opt out anytime if you do not want to receive further marketing-related communication from us. We will not use your personal data for taking any automated decisions affecting you or creating profiles other than described above. Depending on for which of the above Permitted Purposes we use your personal data, we may process your personal data on one or more of the following legal grounds:
Because processing is necessary for the performance of your instructions or other contract with you or your organization;
To comply with our legal obligations (e.g. to keep records for tax purposes); or
Because processing is necessary for purposes of our legitimate interest or those of any third-party recipients that receive your personal data, provided that such interests are not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In addition, the processing may be based on your consent where you have expressly given that to us.

6 - Personal data about other people which you provide to us

If you provide personal data to us about someone else (such as one of your directors or employees, or someone with whom you have business dealings) you must ensure that you are entitled to disclose that personal data to us and that, without our taking any further steps, we may collect, use and disclose that personal data as described in this Privacy Policy. In particular, you must ensure the individual concerned is aware of the various matters detailed in this Privacy Policy, as those matters relate to that individual, including our identity, how to contact us, our purposes of collection, our personal data disclosure practices (including disclosure to overseas recipients), the individual’s right to obtain access to the personal data and make complaints about the handling of the personal data, and the consequences if the personal data is not provided (such as our inability to provide services).

7 - Transfering your personal data abroad

UniversalAutomation.org is a global association. We may transfer your personal data abroad if required for the Permitted Purposes as described above. This may include countries which do not provide the same level of protection as the laws of your home country (for example, the laws within the European Economic Area or Australia). We will ensure that any such international transfers are made subject to appropriate or suitable safeguards as required by the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 or other relevant laws. This includes entering into the EU Standard Contractual Clauses which are available here. You may contact us anytime using the contact details below if you would like further information on such safeguards. We will require our agents, consultants and sub-contractors and others who are outside the European Economic Area or Australia and to whom we transfer your personal data to ensure a level of data protection at least as protective as that required in the European Economic Area and Australia. When doing so we will comply with applicable data protection requirements and take appropriate safeguards to ensure the security and integrity of your personal data.

8 - How long do we keep your personal information?

We keep information as needed to perform the purposes described above, taking into consideration the need to provide the services, marketing requirements, security requirements, legal requirements and statute of limitations.

9 - Who do we share personal information with and where is it processed?

Personal information will be processed by our affiliates and suppliers involved in the provision of the services and in the performance of the purposes described in Section 5. We take measures to ensure that personal information receives an adequate level of protection. We do not sell your personal information. Our affiliates and suppliers provide service including hosting and maintenance, performance monitoring and security. As we are a global association, teams and suppliers may have global or multi-country roles, and they can be located anywhere in the world, in countries with different privacy standards than the country of our customers. We may also share your information, as necessary :

with competent authorities, based on a good faith belief that disclosure is necessary to respond to a judicial process, a valid official inquiry, or if otherwise required by law;
to defend our legal rights, or to protect the rights or safety of any person or entity;
as instructed by you;
with third parties in the context of reorganization of operations.

Google Analytics

The service includes Google Analytics, a Google service which provides us with information about how you use the mobile and the web applications. Google publishes information about its use of information at https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/partner-sites Google Analytics features are used to understand how often functionalities are used.

10 - How do we secure personal information?

We will take appropriate technical and organizational measures to keep your personal data confidential and secure in accordance with our internal procedures covering the storage, disclosure of and access to personal data. Personal data may be kept on our personal data technology systems, those of our contractors or in paper files. However, no method of transmission over the internet or of electronic storage is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11 - How to exercise your choices and rights about your personal information?

To exercise the data protection rights granted under applicable data protection law, such as the rights to be informed, to access, to rectify, to withdraw consent, to request restriction or erasure, the right to object and data portability, you may make a request at data.privacy@universalautomation.org. To ensure the security of your personal information, we may ask you to provide other details to verify your identity. You may address questions or comments about our privacy practices or this privacy notice to the following e-mail address: data.privacy@universalautomation.orgor at: UniversalAutomation.org AISBL Havenlaan 86C box 204 1000 Brussels Belgium If you believe that we have processed your personal information in violation of applicable law, you may file a complaint using the e-mail address stated above or, the contact details above or with a supervisory authority. We reserve the right to charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any manifestly unfounded or excessive requests concerning your access to your data, and for any additional copies of the personal data you request from us. We will consider any requests or complaints which we receive and provide you with a response in a timely manner. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may take your complaint to the relevant privacy regulator. We will provide you with details of your relevant regulator upon request

12 - Updates to this privacy policy

This Privacy Policy was last updated in November 2021. We reserve the right to update and change this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect any changes to the way in which we process your personal data or changing legal requirements. In case of any such changes, we will post the changed Privacy Policy on our website or publish it otherwise. The changes will take effect as soon as they are posted on this website.

Join the team changing the game!

Plug & Produce

Application Portability & Interoperability

IT/OT Convergence

A new automation paradigm is required!

News & Events

First-rate additions to the UniversalAutomation.org management committee

IEEE ETFA 2025

IEEE ISSIA 2025

Join the team
changing the game!