Industrial software developers can add low-code developers to their teams by leveraging domain experts, software tools and appropriate risk mitigation. See benefits, four ways to decrease risk.
Low-code development risk, reward insights
- Empowering people without formal programming training can create software applications using low-code software to add workforce value.
- With benefits come risk, including proliferation of rogue software.
- Four ways can optimize returns on a low-code investment while decreasing risk.
If you are looking into using low-code application development solutions, you are likely sensing a gap between the people who shape your business and operational vision and those who will produce the myriad lines of computer code necessary to implement it. You have probably heard about the tremendous productivity gains that executives and operations managers have made by using application development sandboxes, in which common functionality is already pre-coded, so all they have to do to build an application is drag and drop blocks together.
A supplier of manufacturing execution systems (MES) software that automates complex applications for some of the world’s largest manufacturers benefits from low-code development as part of a broader strategy that does not try to accomplish everything with low-code. Here are some things to consider before leaping into low-code.
Potential low-code benefits: More help, faster development
By empowering people without formal programming training to create and deploy software applications, low-code software can add significant value to your workforce. Low-code tools streamline coding through intuitive visual interfaces such as drag-and-drop elements and dropdown menus, mostly using pre-programmed blocks of code, similar to interlocking children’s building blocks. This frees users to focus on solving business or production problems rather than on coding.
Someone without programming training can use low-code tools to:
- Create user interfaces. Starting with a white page, they can drag and drop code blocks representing functionality and interfaces. Adding simple actions, like filling a form, pressing a button or displaying information, are all things that can be done without writing code.
- Create business logic, such as workflows that message operators. Without extensive programming, they can create simple functions, like notifying an operator when the system goes down. They could also configure actions like ordering materials or triggering a quality procedure, but such complex sets of business actions are often more transparent, maintainable and optimized when complemented by custom code.
- Connect equipment, creating automation tasks and workflows across multiple applications, for example, connecting process equipment such as injection molding systems, dryers and robots.
- Extend base functionality of enterprise applications such as MES, enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM) and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Such capabilities that once required programming can now provide many business benefits. They can increase application development productivity and reduce maintenance dramatically. This can help offset staffing gaps, accelerate time to market and provide greater access to operational data for analytics. However, achieving these benefits requires awareness and management of potential pitfalls that can counter a low-code initiative.
Consider low-code development risks
Many companies are achieving some combination of such benefits, but they do not come without risk, one of which is proliferation of rogue software. Systems built without explicit organizational approval and information technology (IT) or operational technology (OT) control can lead to security risks, non-compliance issues and data management and maintenance challenges.
Solutions built around quick fixes without considering long-term implications can lead to system crashes, rework, and other unanticipated issues down the road. For example, if you use low-code tools to build an application that performs an operation every 10 minutes but later needs it to trigger every 300 milliseconds, the performance demands would be entirely different. The architecture required for milliseconds is not the same as that for minutes, and failing to account for this difference could lead to critical performance bottlenecks or system instability.
Frequent, unplanned customizations can lead to a system that is increasingly cumbersome to upgrade or scale over time. If a company mandates low code options, it could straitjacket in house programmers. Some low-code vendors do not support full-code at all, making integration with more advanced systems difficult. It would also prevent skilled programmers from building more elegant, streamlined solutions that could never be obtained with low code.
How to mitigate low-code development risks
The benefits of low-code development, however, can sometimes surpass the risk. Here are four ways to optimize returns on a low-code investment while decreasing risk:
- Govern. Establish governance frameworks that define standards, best practices, and oversight mechanisms for low-code development, especially clarifying the purpose. Whether you are seeking to increase application quality by including more domain experience, raising productivity, or compensating for staff shortages will affect the role that low-code development plays in your operations, including the people who are given access to the tools.
- Train. Designate staff that will have access to low-code tools and train them not only on the use of the tools but on the overall principles of good software design.
- Monitor. Frequently audit and review customizations and applications developed to ensure they align with broader business and IT strategies, and that maintainability is accounted for.
- Leverage vendor relationships. In many industrial MES implementations, providers typically handle the initial coding needed to establish core functionality and then give users access to a sandbox of pre-coded, tested, and secure components that can be adapted to specific needs.
From industrial software coding to configuration
Technology analyst firm Gartner forecasts that the market for low-code development tools will grow by 19% in 2026, with developers outside of formal IT departments accounting for at least 80% of that growth.
While low-code typically involves handholding by IT, we also see growing interest in no-code solutions, in which domain experts can build plug-and-play applications with no programming at all. In the no-code environment, end users could configure a solution using only visual tools, allowing domain experts even less versed in programming to create extensions or applications.
On the horizon is generative AI, which might use automation not only for the code development but potentially suggest performance, or maybe even business improvements. Some industrial software suppliers are using AI to predict equipment performance and system health based on analysis of operational data.
Domain expertise helps no-code, low-code programmers
By empowering domain experts with tools to configure applications without coding or coders as the goal, we are seeing the emergence of the first generation of what are called “citizen programmers.” Low-code is the gateway to this world.
Even if domain experts do not become citizen programmers, low-code software can improve communication between domain and IT experts. Developing in low code brings visibility among all roles not just software engineers. And ultimately, optimizing control of business, process or application development is what it is all about.
João Roque is architect and advocate, automation and connectivity, Critical Manufacturing. Edited by Mark T. Hoske, editor-in-chief, Control Engineering, WTWH Media, [email protected].
Keywords
Low-code programming, no-code programming
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