Industrial Automation

Feature

Build safe, deterministic and future-proof industrial systems with embedded software you can trust

Industrial automation software must run predictably for decades while meeting strict safety and security requirements. As systems grow more complex, from Programmable Logic Controller, (PLCs) and robotics to power electronics and connected devices, development workflows must remain efficient and safety‑driven.

IAR’s safety‑certified embedded software platform enables machine builders, Tier‑1 suppliers, system integrators, and semiconductor partners to deliver with confidence. TÜV SÜD‑certified IEC 61508 tools for any SIL, classified for use in safety‑critical development, advanced debugging and trace, built‑in security, code analysis, and CI/CD‑ready build tools help reduce certification risk and long‑term lifecycle cost.

Across the industrial automation ecosystem, IAR is the software foundation trusted for long‑lifecycle, safety‑critical systems.With support for Arm, RISC‑V, and proprietary architectures including Renesas RX/RL78/RH850/RZ and STM8, IAR delivers vendor‑agnostic flexibility, optimized performance, deterministic debugging, and long‑term stability across legacy and next‑generation platforms.

Applications

Across every industrial application, IAR's trusted technology delivers

Factory & Process Automation

Deterministic control, long‑term stability, and simplified functional safety compliance.

PLCs, industrial controllers, and distributed I/O systems rely on deterministic execution and predictable behavior over decades, typically built on platforms such as STM32, Renesas RA/RX/RZ, Infineon XMC, and NXP MCX.

IAR enables safety‑certified and deterministic control software with TÜV SÜD‑certified IEC 61508 toolchains, real‑time trace, and highly optimized code generation, reducing certification effort while delivering up to 20–30% smaller code size to lower MCU cost and extend product lifecycles.

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Robotics & Motion Control

Microsecond precision, synchronized motion, and safety‑ready performance.

Industrial robots, servo drives, and motion platforms demand microsecond‑level timing and hard real‑time Ethernet, commonly built on Renesas RX/RZ, NXP MCX, Infineon XMC, and STM32 platforms using EtherCAT, PROFINET, or SERCOS.

IAR delivers highly optimized control‑loop performance, real‑time trace, and deterministic debugging, enabling smoother motion, lower jitter, and up to 29.8% higher execution performance, improving response time and axis synchronization.

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Power, Energy & Electrification

Efficient control, predictable execution, and safety‑driven development.

Power converters, inverters, motor drives, and energy systems rely on efficient control algorithms using platforms such as Infineon XMC, TI MSP430, STM32, and Renesas RX/RA.

IAR improves control efficiency through compact and fast code, floating‑point optimization, and power‑aware debugging, helping teams reduce memory footprint by up to 30% and lower overall BOM cost while meeting IEC 61508 safety requirements.

Building & Industrial Infrastructure Automation

Secure, maintainable systems with long‑term architectural flexibility.

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC), lighting, access control, and industrial infrastructure systems demand reliable operation, strong security, and long‑term maintainability across platforms such as STM32, Renesas RA/RZ, NXP MCX, and STM32MP1.

IAR provides safety‑ready development with secure boot, firmware signing, and long‑term toolchain stability, eliminating up to 12 months of in‑house functional‑safety tool validation and protecting infrastructure investments over 10–20 year product lifecycles.

Industrial Logistics & Asset Tracking

Reliable fleet‑scale deployment with secure and efficient software.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs),

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs),

and asset‑tracking systems demand reliable firmware updates, low power consumption, and secure operation at scale, built on Renesas RX, NXP MCX, STM32, and RISC‑V devices.

IAR reduces memory footprint and build complexity while enabling secure firmware workflows and CI/CD‑ready automation, cutting build times by up to 50% and supporting efficient updates across thousands of deployed devices.

industrial automation robot arm engineer with touchpad

Industrial IoT & Smart Systems

Secure connectivity, scalable development, and long product lifecycles.

Industrial IoT systems connect machines and sensors for predictive maintenance and remote monitoring across mixed hardware generations.

IAR enables cloud‑ready development with containerized build tools, certified code analysis, and secure provisioning, helping teams shorten debugging time by up to 60–70% and accelerate time‑to‑market for connected industrial products.

IAR platform

IAR: The platform of choice for industrial automation

Why industrial OEMs and machine builders choose IAR

Accelerated delivery of industrial controllers, machines, and systems using a single embedded toolchain across factories, robots, energy systems, and infrastructure.
Lower operational and lifecycle cost through reusable software platforms, deterministic performance, and long‑term toolchain stability.
Reduced program and certification risk with TÜV SÜD‑certified IEC 61508 tools, certified code analysis, and built‑in security from secure boot to firmware updates.
Faster time‑to‑market enabled by CI/CD‑ready build tools, containerized workflows, and automated quality gates.
Future‑proof investments through broad MCU and MPU coverage, architecture flexibility, and strong ecosystem support across industrial silicon vendors.

Why Tier‑1 suppliers and system integrators rely on IAR

Safety‑certified toolchains that reduce qualification effort and audit overhead for IEC 61508‑based systems.
Automated MISRA C/C++, CERT C/C++, and CWE analysis embedded directly in CI/CD pipelines for continuous compliance.
Consistent multi‑architecture support across Arm®, RISC‑V, Renesas RX/RL78/RH850/RZ, STM8, and more, enabling reuse across customer and project requirements.
Highly optimizing C/C++ compilers that reduce BOM cost, right‑size MCUs, and deliver deterministic performance for real‑time subsystems.
Integrated secure boot, firmware signing, and CI/CD workflows that scale across projects, validation environments, and customer platforms.

Why developers love IAR

Advanced debugging with real‑time trace, timeline views, profiling, and RTOS awareness to analyze timing‑critical control loops and communication paths.
Built‑in code quality and safety tools, including certified static analysis (MISRA C/C++, CERT C/C++, CWE) and runtime checks.
Faster builds and iterations with IAR Build Tools, supporting local and containerized CI/CD pipelines.
Industry‑leading optimization that generates compact, fast, and reliable code for performance‑critical industrial applications.
Flexible, modern workflows with support for popular IDEs, scripting, CI/CD environments, and long‑term reproducibility.

Strong ecosystem

Where industrial communication stacks and real‑time networking come together

Modern industrial development connects fieldbus, industrial Ethernet, and Industrial IoT stacks across diverse embedded platforms. Discover how this unified IAR ecosystem enables deterministic, secure, and scalable industrial communication.

IAR IDE and VS Code efficiency flexibility female developer

Industrial Ethernet

Real‑time Ethernet performance for controllers and motion systems

PROFINET, EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP, SERCOS III

Industrial Ethernet forms the backbone of modern automation, connecting controllers, drivers, robots, and machines under strict real‑time constraints.

IAR supports deterministic execution of industrial Ethernet stacks across MCUs and MPUs, enabling high‑performance control and motion applications. With proven compatibility with leading commercial and open‑source stacks, IAR helps teams build scalable, real‑time Ethernet solutions for factory automation and robotics.

blue board and debugging a renesas board.

Industrial IoT & interoperability

Secure, vendor‑neutral connectivity from machines to the cloud

OPC UA, multi‑protocol gateways

Industrial systems increasingly require interoperable communication across devices, networks, and higher‑level systems.

IAR enables robust Industrial IoT and gateway development by supporting OPC UA and multi‑protocol communication on a wide range of architectures. Validated with commercial providers and open‑source stacks, IAR allows teams to build secure, flexible, and future‑ready industrial connectivity without vendor lock‑in.

Fieldbus communication

Deterministic device‑level communication for industrial control

CAN, CANopen, Modbus, IO‑Link

Industrial fieldbus communication connects sensors, actuators, and embedded devices where deterministic timing and compact code are critical.

IAR ensures fieldbus protocol stacks execute predictably and efficiently on resource‑constrained MCUs. Validated with commercial stacks and vendor SDKs, IAR enables reliable device‑level communication with optimized code size, low latency, and long‑term maintainability across industrial platforms.

What drives your focus?

Find the insights that move your industrial programs forward

Whether you're leading long‑lifecycle industrial platforms, optimizing engineering productivity, or modernizing embedded workflows for connected and safety‑critical systems, choose the path that matches your goals.

Industrial leadership & strategy

Looking for trusted, safety‑certified industrial solutions?

Explore how IAR’s platform supports IEC 61508 programs across all SIL levels, reduces certification risk, and enables reliable development for factory automation, robotics, energy systems, industrial infrastructure, logistics, and Industrial IoT.

With TÜV SÜD‑certified tools, long‑term support, and broad MCU/MPU coverage, IAR helps industrial leaders lower operational risk, preserve silicon flexibility, and future‑proof investments.

Engineering productivity & workflows

Leading technical teams building complex industrial systems?

Discover development workflows optimized for deterministic performance, safety, and long‑term maintainability. IAR supports highly optimizing C/C++ compilers, advanced debugging and real‑time trace, static and runtime analysis, end‑to‑end security, and CI/CD‑ready build tools.

Consistent workflows across Arm, RISC‑V, and proprietary architectures help engineering teams accelerate delivery while maintaining quality and compliance across product lines.

New to industrial software modernization

Evaluating tools for next‑generation industrial systems?

Get an overview of how modern embedded toolchains support safety‑critical control, industrial communication, connectivity, and long‑lifecycle products.

Learn how IAR reduces program risk, shortens time to market, and improves software quality for both legacy and next‑generation industrial platforms.

Live webinar

Reducing safety risk in evolving industrial applications

Smart Industry fails when safety foundations can’t scale.

In this webinar, IAR shows how a TÜV SÜD–certified IEC 61508 foundation reduces risk, ensures deterministic behavior, and supports the evolution of industrial systems across platforms.

Join us to learn how teams design safety‑ready systems that last for decades.

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Customer cases

Get inspiration on how world-leading companies enhance their embedded development with our solutions.

CI/CD for agile industrial development

Panasonic Electric Works needed to balance rapid development with high product quality across its lighting, environmental energy, and industrial solutions businesses. After challenges with open‑source CI/CD tooling, the team adopted IAR to establish a scalable and maintainable CI/CD environment.

The result was seamless integration with existing development assets, long‑term toolchain stability, and reliable support, enabling faster development cycles, higher productivity, and continuous maintenance of industrial products.

High‑quality smart metering with integrated code analysis

Global smart metering leader Landis+Gyr has relied on IAR for many years across a wide range of microcontroller platforms. To further improve software quality and reduce time-to-market, the company adopted IAR C‑STAT static analysis.

By integrating code analysis directly into the development workflow, engineers detect defects earlier, reduce rework, and lower development cost, supporting reliable, long‑lifecycle industrial and energy systems.

Migrating architectures while ensuring reliability

Display and servo motor manufacturer Futaba adopted IAR for both Arm‑based and Renesas microcontrollers. Following supply‑chain disruptions, the company diversified its hardware platforms and selected IAR for its architecture flexibility, commercial support, and functional safety capabilities.

IAR’s professional toolchain helped Futaba maintain high software quality while managing platform transitions, reducing risk and ensuring reliable development across multiple industrial product lines.

Accelerating development with model‑based design

Schneider Electric develops complex embedded firmware for data center and industrial infrastructure systems. To speed development and reduce complexity, the company adopted IAR for state‑machine modeling and automatic code generation.

By applying consistent semantics and generating production‑ready code, Schneider Electric significantly reduced development time while improving software consistency and maintainability across projects.

More insights

Embedded knowledge in industrial automation

Functional safety, Code quality, Embedded DevOps, Industrial Automation, MedTech

Software-defined everything in embedded systems: Staying in control as complexity grows

MISRA, Code quality, CI/CD

Breaking the CI/CD bottleneck: Scaling Embedded DevSecOps with containers and automation

Compliance

Ensure safety compliance from start

Our solutions are TÜV SÜD certified

tuv sud

As embedded systems grow more complex, functional safety becomes crucial, especially in industries like automotive where compliance is mandatory.

Our functional safety editions are TÜV SÜD-certified, ensuring they meet the necessary standards for developing safety-critical applications. By choosing IAR as your development platform, you eliminate the need to independently evaluate the tool’s development process or conduct your own compliance testing. TÜV SÜD has already handled this, saving you both time and costs, so you can focus on your code and application features.

Functional safety

Supported standard IEC 61508

IEC 61508 is the international umbrella standard for functional safety. The standard and standards derived from it are used within all kinds of industries with requirements on reliability and safety, for example, process industries, the oil and gas industry, nuclear power plants, machinery, and railway control systems.

The IAR certified toolchains, classified as T3 off-line tools according to IEC 61508-4:2010, are suitable to be used in safety-related development according to IEC 61508:2010 for any SIL.

Our certified architectures

	Arm	RISC-V	Renesas RL78	Renesas RX	Renesas RH850	STM8
Industrial automation IEC 61508 (any SIL)

*IEC 61508 recommends the avoidance of SIL 4 safety functions, responsibility remains with the user to apply diverse tools or additional risk reduction measures.

IAR’s toolchain is compatible with the following functional safety packages from our semiconductor partners. Contact your semiconductor for the latest compatible IAR version.

STM32, Renesas RX, RA and RZ	MCU and MPU devices
SIL Functional Safety Package industrial IEC 61508	STM32F0, F1, F3, F4, F7, H7, L0, L4/L4+, G0, G4, L5 MCUs, STM32MP1 MPU
Renesas Diagnostics Software for RA4M1 Group and RA6 Series MCU's, IEC61508 - SIL3	RA6/A4/A2 series (RA6M4,RA6M5,RA6E1,RA6E2,RA6T2 and RA6T3, RA4M2,RA4M3,RA4E1,RA4E2 and RA4T1, RA2A1,RA2L1,RA2E1,and RA2E2)
Renesas Diagnostics Software for RZ/T and RZ/N Series, IEC61508 - SIL3	RZ/T&N series (RZ/T2M and RZ/T2, RZ/N2L)
Renesas Diagnostics Software for Renesas RX MCU’s, IEC61508 - SIL3	RX100 series (RX111,RX113,RX130,and RX140), RX200 series (RX24U,RX24T,RX230/RX231,RX23T,RX23W,and RX23E-A) RX600/700 series (RX671,RX660,RX66T,RX66N,RX651/RX65N, RX64M, RX72M,RX72T,RX72N,and RX71M)
Functional Safety over EtherCAT Stack Renesas Functional Safety Platform Software for EWRX, IEC61508 - SIL3	RX600/700 series (RX671,RX660,RX66T,RX66N,RX651/RX65N, RX64M, RX72M,RX72T,RX72N,and RX71M)

Proven industrial communication stacks

Industrial communication stacks & ecosystems

Beyond functional safety certification, industrial systems must also support a wide range of communication protocols and ecosystem stacks, spanning device‑level fieldbus, real‑time Industrial Ethernet, and system‑level interoperability.

IAR’s toolchain and build tools are designed to operate consistently across these layers, integrating with both commercial and open‑source communication stacks while preserving deterministic behavior, safety qualification, and long‑term maintainability.

IAR’s development tools are compatible with a broad range of industrial communication stacks across major semiconductor vendors. For the latest validated toolchain, device, and stack combinations, consult your stack provider.

Layer	Protocol & standard	Stacks & solutions
Fieldbus (device level)	CAN / CANopen	port GmbH, CANopen stacks , vendor SDKs*
	Modbus (RTU / TCP)	FreeModbus, vendor SDKs*
	IO-Link	TI IO-Link stack, ST IO-Link stack, port GmbH
Industrial Ethernet (system level)	PROFINET	rt-labs (p-net), port GmbH , PROFIBUS & PROFINET International
	EtherCAT	SOES, EtherLab, Beckhoff, port GmbH
	EtherNet/IP	port GmbH , TI Industrial SDK
	SERCOS III	Commercial SERCOS stack vendors
Interoperability / IIoT	OPC UA	open62541, Softing
Multi-protocol solutions	Multi-stack platforms	port GmbH, Hilscher (netX), rt-labs
Open-source options	Various	SOES (EtherCAT), p-net (PROFINET), open62541
*Semiconductor SDKs	Integrated stacks	TI Industrial SDK , Renesas , Infineon, NXP Industrial Edge, STMicroelectronics

Don’t see your protocol or stack listed? Contact us to discuss compatibility and supported configurations.

Supported devices

The platform for embedded development

How our solutions help you

Scale development operations with freedom and flexibility, accelerate innovation with code confidence, and simplify compliance while strengthening security.

green developer board with microcontrollers and chips

Architecture and device agnostic

Develop without limits on 20+ architectures

IAR’s platform supports multiple architectures like Arm and RISC-V, ensuring compatibility, eliminating vendor lock-in, and simplifying development across legacy and next-generation embedded systems.

Cloud-ready, tailored for enterprises

Scale seamlessly with cloud-powered development

Seamlessly integrates with private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, enabling remote collaboration, scalable builds, and CI/CD automation while ensuring security, compliance, and efficient resource management.

Functional safety always included

Ensure safety compliance from the start

Pre-certified tools ensure compliance with ISO 26262, IEC 61508, and IEC 62304, reducing certification complexity and helping teams build reliable, safety-critical applications in automotive, medical, and industrial systems.

End-to-end embedded security

Secure your embedded systems at every stage

Built-in security features like secure boot, encrypted code, and runtime integrity verification protect against cyber threats, ensuring compliance with NIST, the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), and ETSI standards.

Platform wheel without header bigger canvas

IAR embedded development platform

Get access to all

Scale development operations with freedom and flexibility, accelerate innovation with code confidence and simplify compliance while strengthening security.

Architecture and device agnostic
Cloud-ready, tailored for enterprises
Functional safety always included
End-to-end embedded security

With our platform, you get access to everything.

Industrial automation