The Hidden Cost of Aging Controls

It is a normal day in your factory when you discover that one of your lines has come to a sudden halt. Your workers start scrambling, trying to find the root of the issue, when you discover that your 30-year-old PLC that you’ve never updated has finally failed. While trying to find a replacement, your lines continue to stay stopped, and your workers are standing around waiting, costing your business hundreds to thousands of dollars for each minute that goes by.

This situation isn’t hypothetical; we see it with our customers every year. The worst part is that it’s entirely preventable.

The Dangerous Illusion of a Working System

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is often a phrase we hear when systems are up and running. While we agree with the logic about leaving existing and working equipment alone, we also oppose factory managers running their systems till failure. However, it’s not that simple. We recognize the capital cost of modernization, and sometimes the risk of a botched upgrade can feel more tangible than the risk of doing nothing.

Aging automation systems don’t carry just a one-time cost but rather compounding costs over years of use. These costs are hidden in maintenance repairs and energy costs with older parts. However, the major cost would be if your operation were to go down with older parts.

The Parts Problem

Here’s where a bad day can become an expensive one. When a modern system fails, replacement parts are typically available, lead times are quick, and your vendor or distributor has the resources available to get your operation back up and running quickly. This is not the case for parts that are several decades into their lives.

Obsolete parts may only become available with third-party suppliers, often with unverified retailers. If the parts are available, lead times are unpredictable, and your line may stay down or running with lower efficiency for longer than you anticipated. Every day that you wait for a replacement part is another day that you are losing revenue.

The Real Cost of Downtime

In the manufacturing industry, unplanned downtime is one of the highest annual costs that operations report. According to a 2022 Gartner Data report, the average cost of downtime in the manufacturing industry globally is $8,581 per minute1. Multiply that number by a couple hours of unplanned downtime, and your operation has taken a significant financial hit. Even at the conservative end, a 24-hour outage can erase months of margin associated with a specific product line.

These costs are only associated with labor and production costs and do not factor in the penalties that may come linked to the intangible damage. Loss of customer trust, strain on employees, and organizational energy consumed by crisis that pulls leadership from everything else that they were working on. All of these factors are rarely seen and almost never mentioned when the topic of modernization comes to the table.

Planned vs Forced Downtime

When considering modernization with your system, the question always comes up: “What’s the point of updating equipment, if we have to shut our line down anyway.” A planned controlled equipment upgrade typically happens in hours outside of operation during a scheduled maintenance window. Your team is already prepared, the parts are in hand, and the support resources are available on site. When finished, you come back online smoothly with a modern system that is more efficient in production, security and reduced risk of a downtime disaster.

A forced failure gives you none of that. It raises chaos, cost and a race against time to replace something that was living on borrowed time.

Don’t Wait for The Clock to Start

  • The Mitsubishi A series was released in 1985 and was discontinued 20 years ago. 

  • The Mitsubishi QnA series was also released in 1990 and was discontinued 13 years ago.

  • The Mitsubishi Q series was released in 1999 and is nearing end of life.

These systems are outdated, yet the vast majority of manufacturing plants are still using them at the heart of their product line. For many manufacturers, migrating to the Mitsubishi IQ-R or MX series is a practical step toward reducing lifecycle cost, improving data visibility, and removing obsolescence risk. Not only do these systems provide you with lower costs along a system lifecycle, faster data logging, and smart manufacturing that connects your system seamlessly to rest of your operation but also protects you from risk on both component failure and compromised security systems.  

If you have aging controls in your facility, then it may be time to assess your production before a failure makes your decision for you. Understand which systems are approaching end of life, what replacement looks like and what a transition plan costs compared to an unplanned failure can take from you.

Contact our team to start the conversation about protecting and upgrading your operation. 

Sources: 

1Eriksen, Lars. (2026, March 29). Manufacturing downtime statistics: Market Data Report 2026. Gitnux. https://gitnux.org/manufacturing-downtime-statistics/