“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a common strategy for programmable logic controllers (PLCs). It’s why many shop floors run on code that, in some cases, is decades old.

The problem is that, eventually, the code will break or need to be updated. And by the time you need to make a change, the automation engineers who wrote that code are long gone. Even if they left documentation, it may be inconsistent, and you have no way of knowing if it’s even up to date.

Industrial automation professionals often face long hours when trying to reverse engineer legacy PLC code. If it’s a complicated piece of code with thousands of lines that was written 20 or 30 years ago, you may have to hire a consultant to manually analyze and document it, which is expensive and takes a lot of time.

But what if you didn’t have to? What if you could use AI today to write documentation that everyone on the factory floor—from automation engineers to frontline machine operators to maintenance technicians—can understand?

Software Defined Automation’s Factory Agent is an AI-powered tool that translates complex control code into clear, easily understandable, human language. With an easy-to-understand description of your code, you can fix problems faster and make more informed decisions about potential changes to your controllers.