How to Explain an Industrial Automation Product

Take a typical product: it reads data from machines, detects problems early and sends alerts. The website says it “unlocks smart manufacturing.” The controls engineer who finds it wants to know which protocols it speaks and whether it needs access to the PLC network; the maintenance manager wants to know which failures it catches; the plant manager wants to know what it costs in downtime avoided; the OT security lead wants to know which ports it opens. None of them gets an answer on the first page. When you explain an industrial automation product, you’re explaining it to a committee, and each member has a different question. This guide walks through seven steps to build an explanation that answers all of them.

Key Takeaways

• Engineers research independently: TREW Marketing’s 2025 survey found buyers complete about 60% of the buying process online before contacting a vendor, and named datasheets (79%), technical articles (61%) and demo videos (35%) among the most valuable content.
• Map the evaluating roles and their questions first. Controls, maintenance, operations, OT security and purchasing each look for something different.
• Show where the product sits in the plant architecture and how it connects, with a diagram. Integration effort is often the deciding question.
• Demonstrate on real equipment, and animate what can’t be filmed, such as signals, data flow or a fault developing. A meta-analysis found instructional animation helps most when it shows the process itself.
• Answer integration and security questions in writing, before they’re asked, and give the evaluator what they need to run a trial.

The core problem: one product, several evaluators

Industrial automation purchases rarely have a single decision-maker. A condition-monitoring system, a new controller, a vision inspection station or a data platform touches several functions, and each has the ability to stop the purchase:

• Controls and automation engineers ask how it connects, what it needs from existing systems and how much work integration is.
• Maintenance and reliability ask which problems it detects or prevents, how early, and what they’d do differently.
• Operations ask what changes for operators and whether it adds screens or alarms.
• IT and OT security ask about network access, data flows, updates and compliance with standards such as ISA/IEC 62443.
• Plant management and purchasing ask about cost, payback and risk.

Marketing copy written for “manufacturers” answers none of these. The questions are specific, technical and often unspoken: if the security lead can’t find the answer, the evaluation quietly stalls.

Step 1: Map the roles and their questions

List the roles that typically evaluate your product and, for each, the three questions they ask most often. Your sales engineers, applications engineers and support team are the source. Then mark which questions your current material answers.

This step guards against a known blind spot. Pamela Hinds’ 1999 study on the “curse of expertise” found that people with deep expertise in a device were worse than people with intermediate experience at predicting what novices would find hard. The product team knows the product too well to see which parts confuse a controls engineer meeting it for the first time.

Step 2: State the problem in plant terms

Before describing the product, describe the problem it solves the way the plant experiences it: unplanned downtime on a specific type of machine, scrap from an undetected drift, technicians spending hours finding the cause of a recurring fault. Use units the plant uses: hours, parts, shifts.

Avoid claiming results you can’t support. If you have customer data the customer has approved for publication, cite it with its conditions. If you don’t, explain the mechanism and let the reader estimate the value for their own plant, perhaps with a simple calculator.

Step 3: Show where it fits in the architecture

Draw the product in a typical plant architecture: which machines or devices it connects to, which protocols it uses (Modbus, OPC UA, MQTT, fieldbuses), where it runs (device, edge gateway, server, cloud), which network it sits on, and which direction data flows. Mark what it doesn’t touch, such as the control logic or the safety system.

This diagram answers the controls engineer and the security lead at once, and it’s often the most-viewed asset in an evaluation. Keep a version for each common deployment pattern.

Step 4: Demonstrate it on real equipment

Show the product working on a real machine or a realistic test rig: installation, the first data, a detection or action, and what the operator or technician sees. Show instrument readings or screen captures so the viewer can check the result.

Label what the demo is. A studio or lab demonstration is labelled as such; a customer installation is shown only with the customer’s permission. A demo that later turns out to have been staged costs more trust than it gained.

Step 5: Animate what can’t be filmed

Much of what an automation product does is invisible: a vibration signature developing over weeks, data moving through a gateway, a control loop compensating for a disturbance, a model comparing a pattern with its baseline. Animation can show these.

Höffler and Leutner’s 2007 meta-analysis of 76 comparisons in Learning and Instruction found a medium overall advantage for instructional animations over static pictures, larger for representational animations that depict the process itself than for decorative ones. Mayer and Moreno’s 2003 review of ways to reduce cognitive load gives practical rules: place labels next to what they describe, cut what doesn’t serve the explanation, and segment a complex process into steps the viewer can follow. Have an engineer review every animation for accuracy, because a beautiful animation of the wrong mechanism is worse than none.

Step 6: Answer integration and security questions in writing

Publish the answers to the questions evaluators ask before buying: supported protocols and versions, required network access and ports, whether connections are inbound or outbound, how data is stored and where, how the product is updated and how updates are signed, which user roles exist, and which security standards the product or its development process follows.

A short, factual integration guide and a security overview remove the most common reasons an evaluation stalls. Novick and Ward’s 2006 study of why people don’t read manuals found that users look for documentation when they need to solve a specific problem and struggle when it’s organized around the product rather than their task, so organize these documents around the evaluator’s questions.

Step 7: Give the evaluator a way to try it

Provide what a team needs to run a trial: a pilot plan (which machine, how long, what will be measured), hardware and network requirements, sample data or a sandbox, and the criteria for deciding whether the pilot worked. A clear pilot plan turns interest into a decision.

Which content answers which evaluator

Evaluator	Their question	Content that answers it
Controls engineer	How does it connect and how much work is integration?	Architecture diagram, integration guide, protocol list
Maintenance and reliability	What does it detect, how early, and what do I do then?	Application article, demo on real equipment, animation of the fault mechanism
Operations	What changes for operators?	Screens and alerts walkthrough, operator workflow video
IT and OT security	What network access does it need, and how is it secured and updated?	Security overview, data-flow diagram, update process
Plant management	What’s the value and the risk?	Problem in plant terms, approved customer data or a value calculator, pilot plan
Purchasing	What exactly are we buying?	Specification sheet, licensing and support terms

How to put it to work

If you have an hour

Write the five evaluator roles for your product and their top three questions, then mark which ones your website answers today.

If you have a sprint

Produce the architecture diagram and a two-page integration and security overview, have a controls engineer and a security lead outside the product team review them, and publish them.

If you want it to last the product’s lifetime

Keep the question map current from sales and support conversations, assign an owner and a reviewer for each content piece, and update the architecture and security documents with every release that changes connectivity.

The question to ask yourself: “If an OT security lead found our product today, could they decide whether to allow it on the network without talking to us?”

Frequently asked questions

How do you explain an industrial automation product to engineers?

Start with the problem in plant terms, show where the product fits in the architecture and how it connects, demonstrate it on real equipment, animate what can’t be seen, and publish clear answers to integration and security questions.

Who evaluates industrial automation products?

Usually several roles: controls and automation engineers, maintenance and reliability, operations, IT and OT security, plant management and purchasing. Each has different questions, and any of them can stop the purchase.

Should industrial product videos use animation or real footage?

Both. Real footage shows the product working on real equipment and builds trust; animation shows mechanisms that can’t be filmed, such as signals, data flows and slow degradation. Animations should be reviewed by an engineer for accuracy.

What security information should an industrial product publish?

Required network access and ports, connection directions, data storage and location, the update process and how updates are signed, user roles, and the security standards the product or its development process follows.

How do I show value without customer case studies?

Explain the mechanism clearly, state the problem in the plant’s units, and give the reader a way to estimate value for their own plant, such as a calculator or a pilot plan with defined measurements.

Related reading: designing dashboards operators act on, Modbus vs OPC UA vs MQTT and briefing a content partner for an embedded launch.

If you’d like the architecture diagrams, demos and animations produced with your engineers reviewing each technical claim, that’s what we do at AlphaCrew Studio.

Sources

1. TREW Marketing with GlobalSpec (2025). 2025 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report. https://www.trewmarketing.com/hubfs/Technical%20Resources/Research/2025%20SMTE%20Research/PDF/2025%20State%20of%20Marketing%20to%20Engineers%20Research.pdf
2. Hinds, P. J. (1999). “The Curse of Expertise: The Effects of Expertise and Debiasing Methods on Prediction of Novice Performance.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5(2), 205–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.5.2.205
3. Höffler, T. N., & Leutner, D. (2007). “Instructional Animation Versus Static Pictures: A Meta-Analysis.” Learning and Instruction, 17(6), 722–738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2007.09.013
4. Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning.” Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3801_6
5. Novick, D. G., & Ward, K. (2006). “Why Don’t People Read the Manual?” Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC ’06), 11–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/1166324.1166329
6. ISA. “ISA/IEC 62443 Series of Standards.” https://www.isa.org/standards-and-publications/isa-standards/isa-iec-62443-series-of-standards