Production line modernisation and machine retrofit

We replace obsolete controllers, drives, panels and enclosures on machines whose mechanics still have years of service left. The retrofit comes with a risk assessment and full documentation, in a shutdown window agreed with production, and you settle with a Polish company on a contract in Polish.

When to modernise

• The S7-300 controller is out of production — parts come from stock and refurbishment, so a CPU failure means downtime counted in days rather than hours.
• The operator panel runs on software that is out of support, and replacing it forces the visualisation to be rewritten anyway.
• After years of changes the program and the schematics no longer match reality, so every modification starts with tracing wires.
• The safety circuits predate any risk assessment, or the documentation of the performance level simply does not exist.
• The machine reports no data at all, so downtime and scrap are counted on paper rather than in a log.
• Rising failure rates start to cost more than the instalments on a modernisation would.

What a retrofit covers

The standard scope is replacing the controller with an S7-1500 and ET 200SP distributed I/O, a new visualisation in WinCC Comfort or WinCC Unified, replacing inverters with Sinamics G120 or servo drives with Sinamics S120, rebuilding the control panel to PN-EN 61439-1 with the machine's electrical equipment to PN-EN 60204-1, and safety circuits designed to PN-EN ISO 13849-1. On top of that comes the documentation: risk assessment, EPLAN schematics, operating manual and as-built documentation in Polish, plus instruction for operators and maintenance.

The mechanics, the frame and the proven process solutions stay — you pay for control, not for a new machine. It is worth bringing the signals out over OPC UA at the same time: a retrofit is the cheapest moment for a data layer, because the panel is open anyway. If you only need new software, with no work on the panel and drives, see Siemens PLC, HMI and SCADA programming.

Machinery Regulation 2023/1230

Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 applies from 20 January 2027 and replaces Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC. For modernisation the decisive concept is substantial modification: if a change goes beyond what the manufacturer intended and creates a new hazard or increases an existing risk, the manufacturer's obligations — risk assessment, technical documentation, declaration and marking — pass to whoever modified the machine.

In practice that means a retrofit has to be planned together with its documentation rather than after it. So every modernisation starts with a risk assessment to PN-EN ISO 13849-1, and the scope of the declaration of conformity and the split of responsibility are written into the contract before work begins. If you have several modernisations planned before 2027, it pays to sequence them so the highest-risk machines are assessed first. We are not a notified body — we deliver the risk assessment, the technical solution and the documentation, and the formal responsibility is divided in the contract.

A schedule without lost output

A modernisation does not have to mean a week of downtime. The new software is tested beforehand on a stand-in rig with simulated signals, the panel is assembled and checked before shipment as part of the acceptance test, and what is left for the site is the swap, the wiring, the start-up and the handover. Production picks the window: a weekend, a maintenance shutdown, a holiday stop, or a section-by-section rollout where the line can be split. The old panel and the old controller stay on site until handover, so going back remains possible. The hour-by-hour schedule — who does what and when — is agreed with maintenance before the team arrives.

What it costs

The price depends on a handful of things: the number of input and output signals, the number and power of the drives, the extent of the safety circuits, the state of the documentation (its absence is a separate inventory stage), the decision between a new panel and re-equipping the existing one, and the length of the shutdown window — the shorter it is, the more preparation goes in beforehand. So the quote follows an inventory rather than a price list, and it is broken down by stage so you can see what you are paying for.

Modernisation capex qualifies in SMART implementation projects and in the Polish Investment Zone as a fundamental change of the production process. The intensity depends on company size and plant location, and calls change — we keep the current terms and deadlines on the funding page. The full scope of work on a new machine is described under industrial automation.