Present days, factories are very different from the way they were ten years ago. Robots are used for welding, and monitoring equipment keeps a close watch on temperature changes in real time. Dashboards flag problems before anyone notices them. All of this is based on industrial automation. It is now placing new demands on the networks that tie everything together.
This change is not taking place by itself. With plants installing more connected equipment, IT and operations teams now manage infrastructure that resembles a data center much more than a conventional shop floor. That broader change is reflected in the global industrial automation market, which is estimated to be valued at USD 261.23 billion in 2026 and is expected to reach USD 455.26 billion by 2033, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.7% from 2026 to 2033. So, what exactly is causing this change, and what implications does it have for those who manage enterprise networks? Let's examine it in more detail.
Why Industrial Automation Systems Are Under More Pressure Than Ever
Today's industrial automation systems have outgrown their original role of simply operating machinery. They now gather data, communicate with the cloud, and supply information to analytics platforms, which in turn influence business decisions. That represents a marked advancement compared to the closed and isolated control loops of earlier times.
The scale of this change is also visible in the technology being deployed across factories. More connected equipment means more physical infrastructure, more data, and more points that networks need to support reliably. From a component perspective, hardware is estimated to account for the largest share of the industrial automation market, contributing 53.8% of the market in 2026. That makes sense on the factory floor, where sensors, controllers, networking equipment, robotics, and other physical systems form the foundation on which the wider automation environment operates.
The Industrial Automation Technology Stack Powering Smart Factories
The largest and most obvious component is the fleet of IoT devices. On a single production line, there are now thousands of detectors, cameras, and controllers, each one producing a continuous flow of data. The fact that there are so many endpoints means that the way networks are designed, monitored, and secured must be reconsidered one can't manage five thousand sensors in the same way that they would manage fifty.
The integration of SCADA systems is also a fundamental issue. SCADA systems have existed for many decades. But they are now required to communicate with cloud services, ERP systems, and mobile dashboards rather than remaining on a separate network. The ability to integrate in this way brings about new efficiencies. It also means that SCADA environments must receive the same level of cybersecurity attention as any other system that is accessible over the internet.
The technology landscape spans programmable logic controllers (PLC), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), distributed control systems (DCS), human-machine interfaces (HMI), and industrial robotics. Among these, programmable logic controllers (PLC) are estimated to hold the largest technology share at 40.6% in 2026. Their role is particularly important because PLCs sit close to the machinery itself, translating programmed instructions into the real-time actions that keep automated production processes moving.
That makes the relationship between PLCs, SCADA, and the wider network increasingly important. A controller may execute the immediate command, but the surrounding infrastructure is responsible for carrying data upward to monitoring systems, analytics platforms, and business applications.
Edge computing in the manufacturing sector addresses a real-world issue since sending all the sensor data to a remote cloud server is both slow and costly. By processing the data near the point where it is generated, latency is reduced, and the strain on the bandwidth is lessened, something that is very important when a robotic arm has to respond within milliseconds rather than seconds.
Predictive maintenance sensors complete the picture. These sensors monitor vibration, heat, and wear patterns and give a warning about potential problems before they lead to downtime. In fact, this approach has now become one of the most clear-cut stories regarding return on investment in industrial automation. It is well known that dealing with unplanned downtime afterward is extremely costly.
Real-time monitoring dashboards as well as robotics process control combine all these elements to provide plant managers with a unified view of equipment health, throughput, and quality control.
The expanding technology stack is also reflected in the companies building and supplying these systems. Industrial automation players such as ABB Ltd, Emerson Electric Co., FANUC Corporation, General Electric Company, Honeywell Process Solutions, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Omron Corporation, Rockwell Automation Inc., Schneider Electric SE, Siemens AG, and Yokogawa Electric Corporation operate across different parts of this ecosystem, alongside specialists such as Adisra, Endress + Hauser, Fizyr, and Stratasys. Their presence across control systems, robotics, industrial software, sensing, and related technologies illustrates just how broad the modern automation environment has become.
IPv6 and the New Reality of IoT Networks
Each sensor, camera, and controller located on a factory floor has to have its own network address. This was not a problem when the number of connected devices in a facility was only a few hundred. Nowadays, however, the situation is very different. Smart factory connectivity involves thousands of devices per site, sometimes covering dozens of locations.
The issue is that IPv4 address exhaustion does represent a real limitation, since there aren't sufficient IPv4 addresses remaining to comfortably accommodate such a large scale. This is the reason why a greater number of industrial networks are moving to IPv6. IPv6 provides a much larger pool of addresses and was designed with modern, high-density networking in mind.
That change does present a practical problem. How do they monitor, test, and manage a huge number of IoT devices dispersed across an IPv6 network without accidentally exposing internal systems or hitting rate limits during large-scale testing? That is why an IPv6 proxy setup is worthwhile. It enables teams to route their monitoring and testing traffic through a large number of IPv6 addresses. As a result, it becomes much simpler to check device connectivity, verify SCADA endpoints, and carry out stress tests on the network infrastructure on a large scale.
Keeping Corporate Networks Scalable and Reliable
The process of increasing industrial automation is continuous. On the network side, the same questions keep coming up.
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Challenge
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What Helps
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Too many devices, not enough addresses
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Migrating to IPv6, using proxy infrastructure for large-scale testing
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Slow response times from distant cloud processing
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Adding edge computing closer to the production line
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SCADA systems exposed to new cyber risks
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Segmenting networks, applying zero-trust principles
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Downtime from unexpected equipment failure
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Rolling out predictive maintenance sensors
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Limited visibility across multiple plants
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Centralizing data through real-time monitoring dashboards
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IoT is becoming an increasingly important technology priority for enterprises, with spending on connected technologies forming a growing part of digital transformation budgets. Rather than adopting automation all at once, manufacturers are generally taking a gradual approach, expanding connected systems and capabilities plant by plant as their operational needs evolve.
Bringing It All Together
Industrial automation has developed far beyond the use of robots on an assembly line. It now involves network architecture, address management, edge processing, and cybersecurity. Firms that deal with it effectively usually view it as a series of small continual improvements. For example, they increase IPv6 capacity in one area, strengthen SCADA security in another, and install predictive sensors in places where downtime is most damaging.
For IT and operations teams that are handling this jointly, the key point is quite clear. That discussion about industrial automation and enterprise networking is no longer something that can be treated as separate. It's the same discussion, just viewed from two different perspectives.
