Consequently, the industrial equipment supplier is the most immediate beneficiary of this technology because one will be able to develop controllers faster and accelerate a product's introduction to the marketplace. This approach results in the software being complete ahead of the hardware design and significantly reduces the hardware and software integration cycle. In addition, the equipment supplier can take advantage of the PC price curve to continually reduce controller costs without affecting previously developed software. The end user of production equipment will also see benefits with an open architecture controller. Using a common API, programs become independent of the individual mechanisms on which they are run.
Operating costs are also lower because of reduced training and increased safety.
Operators will see a common interface, common diagnostic tools, and clear error messages. Furthermore, open architecture controllers are easier to connect into plant networks and Intranets. Industry benefits and academic research becomes immediately relevant. Any company interested in developing a compliant controller has access to the entire set of APIs, i.e., all the information needed to develop a compliant controller. The technology used to implement the APIs by interested companies could vary considerably, yet the software that uses a concatenation of the APIs would run on any compliant machine.