Manufacturing, construction and industrial processes
Modernise the control system without stopping the plant.
PLC and SCADA retrofit, process instrumentation, rotating equipment monitoring and reliable OEE. Plus custom machinery when the catalogue does not solve the process.
Discontinued PLCs, cards sourced second-hand, SCADA without support and workstations on unsupported operating systems. The risk is not technological: it is that a control failure stops the line with no return date.
02
Rotating equipment is the blind spot
Pumps, motors and drives appear all over the plant and are almost never monitored. It is the most repeatable asset and the one that most often stops a process without having warned.
03
Far more is collected than is used
The first profitable analytics project is usually not training a model, but ordering, integrating and contextualising the data the plant is already generating and storing without looking at.
Less than half
Share of collected industrial data that plants actually use, according to a global study of more than 1,500 manufacturers.
Source: Rockwell Automation, State of Smart Manufacturing 2025
04
OEE calculated by hand and arriving late
Availability, performance and quality reconstructed in a spreadsheet at the end of the shift. Useful for reporting, not for correcting while the line is still running.
What is being quoted
The projects this sector is asking for.
This is not a list of what we can do: it is what is being tendered and quoted in this industry right now. If your problem is on it, the conversation starts with context.
PLC migration and retrofit
Basic and detailed engineering, logic migration, screens, FAT/SAT testing, commissioning, backups and as-built documentation.
SCADA modernisation
Screens, alarm hierarchy, redundancy and secure remote access on platforms with current support.
Process instrumentation
Pressure, flow, level, temperature and in-line weighing, with the variable chosen for what has to be controlled and not for what is easy to install.
Rotating equipment monitoring
Three-phase current, vibration, bearing temperature, suction and discharge pressure, flow and pump curve, with cavitation detection and off-best-efficiency-point operation.
OPC UA, MQTT and Modbus integration
Connecting PLCs, historians, OEM equipment and cloud platforms so data leaves the floor without rebuilding the architecture.
OEE and alarm management
Availability, performance and quality computed from the signal, with an alarm hierarchy that separates what demands action from what merely informs.
Custom machinery and robotics
Design and fabrication of equipment for processes the standard market does not solve, with precision robotics integrated and temporary structures assembled.
How we work here
Our capability, applied to manufacturing, construction and industrial processes.
01
Field
Process instrumentation and sensors on rotating equipment, with PLCs and drives where control has to act in line.
02
Link
Plant network towards line control, with segmentation between the process network and the corporate one from the design stage.
03
Platform
Historian and a contextualisation layer that joins the process signal with the production order and the maintenance one.
04
Decision
Live OEE, hierarchical alarms and notice of degradation on rotating equipment before it becomes downtime.
We start with a bounded pilot, build alongside your operations team and measure what matters. If we propose something, we can also implement it.
What it is measured against
The indicators are set before anything is installed.
A pilot without a baseline is no basis for a scale-up decision. These are the indicators the work is designed against, measured before starting so there is something to compare with.
OEE
Availability times performance times quality, computed from the signal rather than reconstructed in a spreadsheet.
MTBF and MTTR
Mean time between failures and mean time to repair, separated by equipment so you know where to act.
Specific consumption
Energy per unit produced, which is what makes two shifts or two lines comparable.
Scrap and rework
Product lost or reworked by cause, measured on the line and not at month-end.
Can a PLC be migrated without stopping the plant?+
In general the migration is prepared in parallel — logic ported, screens ready, FAT testing done on the bench — and the shutdown is confined to the connection window. How long that window lasts depends on the electrical architecture and the process, and is defined in detailed engineering before committing to a date.
What is a SCADA retrofit and when is it worth it?+
It is replacing the supervisory layer while keeping field instrumentation and control. It is worth it when the SCADA is out of support, when workstations run on unsupported systems, or when secure remote access is needed and the current platform cannot provide it.
How do you integrate a closed OEM system?+
First you exhaust what the equipment itself exposes — OPC UA, Modbus, a documented data port. If nothing usable is exposed, we instrument in parallel: current, vibration and temperature from outside give a lot of signal without touching the manufacturer's warranty.
What does a reliable OEE require?+
Machine signal for availability and cycle, an agreed criterion for what counts as planned downtime, and quality data connected. Without that prior agreement, two departments compute different OEE for the same line and the indicator stops being useful for deciding.
Do you build custom machinery?+
Yes. We design and fabricate equipment for processes the catalogue does not solve, with precision robotics integrated where the task requires it, plus temporary structures for bounded projects.
Contact
Let's talk.
If you have an operational challenge, an innovation project in mind or a question about applying technology to your industry, get in touch.
Synapse Group