Engineering Blog for High Performance Insights

PRODUCT SECURITY BRIEF: Why CRA Annex I fulfilment cannot be left to P&Ls and their engineering departments alone Annex I obligations attach to the manufacturer, a single legal entity, not to the P&L that happens to build the product. When divisions each interpret, implement and evidence Annex I on their own terms, the entity can accumulate several incompatible answers to questions the Regulation expects it to answer once. A market surveillance authority, a notified body or

PRODUCT SECURITY BRIEF. This article discusses the impact when manufacturers of CRA impacted products transition. The EU Cyber Resilience Act hangs every obligation on a single role, the manufacturer, and says almost nothing about what happens when the company holding that role is sold, split, rebranded or wound up. In operational technology, where assets outlive the companies that made them, that silence is a liability someone is already carrying. Usually it is the buyer, a

EXECUTIVE BRIEF: What does Schneiders acquisition of PTC mean for the major OT vendor landscape? We attempt to answer that question in this article. What actually happened On 4 October 2026, PTC signed a merger agreement under which a Schneider Electric subsidiary merges into PTC, leaving PTC a wholly owned Schneider subsidiary. Holders are to receive $205 per share in cash. Equity value is roughly $22.6 billion, enterprise value $23.7 billion, and the price is a 42.3% pre

NEP SERVICES BRIEF: Nexus Engineering Partners offers services to ensure the success of your startup. In this article we explore those services and Nexus Engineering Partners (NEP) unique abilities to ensure startup success. The Debt that Founders Miss Industrial and safety-critical startups rarely fail because the core idea was wrong. They fail, or get repriced, because of decisions made in the first eighteen months by people optimising for the next demo rather than the ev

SECURITY BRIEF: CRA secure-by-default essential requirement through the lens of protocols that the device supports. Protocol security does not behave like a product property. Every industrial protocol that has added cryptographic protection — PROFINET Security Classes 2 and 3, CIP Security on EtherNet/IP, the OPC UA secure channel — protects a session, and a session needs two capable endpoints. The security a plant actually achieves is set by the least-capable peer in each re

OT SECURITY BRIEF: We look into the security aspects of the recently introduced i3X 1.0 (Industrial Interoperability eXchange) In June 2026, CESMII froze version 1.0 of i3X — the Industrial Information Interoperability eXchange — and shipped it with an implementation guide, an OpenAPI definition, a Python client, a conformance test suite and an MCP server. Forty-four technology providers have publicly aligned behind it. The specification is small, MIT-licensed, and by severa

NEP SERVICES BRIEF: What technical due diligence misses in regulated product businesses — and why you should know before inking a deal. Your company is considering an acquisition or merger focused on an industrial technology target. The balance sheets look great, the margins are healthy and the sales pipeline is strong and highly engaged. Product releases happen on time and on budget. Standard technology due diligence is mature, but it was built primarily for software com

We discuss MQTT relative to OPC UA. Not equivalents - each brings its own strengths and weaknesses to the OT environment

This article we look at how to deliver the best spectrum measurement for applications and minimize the risks of aliasing.

NEP SERVICES BRIEF: In this brief we look at key aspects that organizations need to build out to ensure that they are fully ready to conform to CRA (Cybersecurity Resiliency Act) a sustainable way. CRA compliance is looming for vendors and operators alike from now for reporting and in 15 months for product compliance. The ramification for non-compliant products is that they will lose their CE mark if they had it before. More importantly, substantial monetary penalties are

SECURITY BRIEF: In this posting we explore the operational aspects of deploying resolution of exploitable vulnerabilities by manufacturers in the field. This article is a companion to "The Four Clocks for Manufacturers" This edition addresses the asset owner and operator: the entity running the estate at the operations level, on whom NIS2’s risk-management measures and Article 23 reporting clocks bind directly (where in scope), and whose engineering obligations run through

CRA Article 14 compliance for manufacturers

OT BRIEF: Here we analyze the reasons why automation vendors position where they are open in their offerings. Contact us for a comprehensive vendor comparison A Rule Hiding in Plain Sight Every major automation vendor now leads with openness. Open ecosystems, open standards, open architectures, open automation: the vocabulary is uniform across the tier, from the largest DCS incumbent to the newest software entrant. And on the surface the claims are individually true. The co

OT POSITION NOTE: We explore the reasons why humanoid robots will not dominate the production line. We also discuss niche applications where it can thrive. Generalized humanoid robots will not become prevalent at production-rated stations on manufacturing lines. Fit-to-function automation — fixed-arm robots, SCARA, delta pickers, cobots, purpose-built cells — will continue to dominate on cost, cycle time, precision, and maintainability. Humanoids will instead capture a diff

POSITION NOTE: Through EU legislated CRA (Cybersecurity Resiliency Act) scope is product level, efforts are made to assert compliance by way of systems architecture - will this assertion hold water? We explore this question. In late 2025, EtherCAT Technology Group consortium announced that its protocol meets the requirements of the EU Cyber Resilience Act. The initial statement, from the EtherCAT Technology Group, was carefully qualified — the protocol was said to meet IEC

MANAGEMENT BRIEF: We analyze cost down opportunities during redesign efforts. Coupling LTBs may present options that extend life and reduce product cost—maybe. Cost reduction is critical for product profitability. It ensures that investments yield high returns. During redesign efforts, we focus on identifying opportunities. The aim is to enhance efficiency while minimizing engineering redesign and manufacturing expenses. Last Time Buy (LTB) from a component manufacturer can

MANAGEMENT BRIEF: We discuss how to manage parts obsolescence. Companion to the Rationed by the Boom. From Reaction to Platform Transition Instrument “Rationed by the Boom” established the problem: AI-driven wafer allocation has sunset the memory standards beneath long-life OT platforms while those platforms sit at peak deployment, and the standard mitigations — last-time buys, qualified crosses, redesigns — each carry costs the generic playbooks understate. This brief addr

SECURITY BRIEF: We look at the CRA impact to component vendors and what it means for OT device suppliers. The Cyber Resilience Act names one primary obligor: the manufacturer who places a product with digital elements on the EU market under its own name. Read narrowly, that puts the compliance burden on the device maker — the relay vendor, the RTU manufacturer, the drive OEM — and leaves the supply chain beneath them untouched. That narrow reading is already failing in pract

EXECUTIVE BRIEF: We look at required reporting becoming effective September 11, 2026 and what it means for the installed base. 24 h EARLY WARNING AFTER AWARENESS 72 h FULL NOTIFICATION VIA THE SRP €15M / 2.5% MAXIMUM FINE (GLOBAL TURNOVER) On 11 September 2026, the first operative obligation of the EU Cyber Resilience Act takes effect: manufacturers of products with digital elements sold into the EU must report actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe incidents to their

EXECUTIVE BRIEF: Legacy memory is under pressure caused by the AI boom. This paper seeks to show why this is happening and what to do about it. 172% DRAM price increase across 2025, with further rises forecast through 2026 30+ weeks Lead times for industrial-grade memory modules, up from a historical 8–10 23% Share of global DRAM wafer capacity now consumed by HBM — up from 8% The Unforeseen Inversion In the second half of 2025, a pricing anomaly appeared that appeared to