CASE STUDY
Leading Industrial Technology Provider
Empowering Mission-Critical OT Excellence with Unified Test Automation for Faster SCADA Delivery, Improved Reliability, and Operational Resilience.
Scalable QA with 2,800+ tests and 75%+ coverage across SCADA, EMS/DMS, and MES workflows
Industry: Industrial Automation & EnergyCompany Size: 300,000+
Client Intro
The client is a global industrial technology leader serving critical infrastructure, utilities, manufacturing, process industries, smart buildings, and energy operations. Its software portfolio supports high-stakes operational environments where application reliability directly impacts grid stability, plant productivity, operator safety, regulatory compliance, and customer trust.
The client’s OT software ecosystem included SCADA platforms such as WinCC, grid operations platforms such as Spectrum Power for EMS, DMS, and ADMS use cases, and manufacturing execution systems such as Opcenter. These applications supported real-time monitoring, control, alarms, field-device interaction, production tracking, operational decision-making, and enterprise integrations.
Because these systems operate in highly regulated, availability-sensitive environments, traditional QA approaches were no longer sufficient. Manual regression cycles were slow, automation was fragmented, and validation depended heavily on domain SMEs who understood operator actions, alarm conditions, grid scenarios, manufacturing execution rules, and plant-specific configurations.
The client selected ACCELQ to establish a unified, business-process-driven automation strategy that could support OT complexity while improving regression speed, test reliability, traceability, and release readiness.
Business Objectives
The organization wanted to move beyond isolated automation scripts and build a sustainable quality engineering model for its industrial software portfolio. Key objectives included:
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Reduce regression timelines across mission-critical OT systems
Regression testing for SCADA, EMS/DMS/ADMS, and MES workflows required multiple environments, complex test data, simulated field inputs, and manual operator validation. The goal was to compress multi-day regression cycles without compromising coverage or control.
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Improve release confidence for operational technology applications
The client needed better confidence before deploying updates to systems used by control-room operators, utility dispatchers, manufacturing supervisors, and plant engineers. This required reliable validation of alarms, dashboards, role-based workflows, operator actions, historical data, and backend integrations.
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Build reusable automation across product families
The client wanted to avoid creating separate automation assets for every product, module, customer configuration, or regional deployment. A reusable component-based framework was required to support WinCC, Spectrum Power, Opcenter, and connected enterprise applications.
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Reduce dependency on domain SMEs for repetitive validation
SMEs were spending significant time repeatedly validating known workflows such as alarm acknowledgement, equipment state changes, production order execution, grid topology updates, dashboard verification, and report validation. The goal was to reserve SME effort for exploratory testing, failure analysis, and high-risk scenario reviews.
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Enable risk-based testing for complex operational scenarios
Not every test scenario carried the same operational risk. The client wanted to prioritize automation for workflows that affected grid reliability, plant throughput, operator decision-making, alarm integrity, integration stability, and compliance reporting.
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Establish traceability across requirements, tests, defects, and releases
Manual test tracking made it difficult to prove coverage across product versions, customer configurations, safety-critical workflows, and release branches. The organization needed clear visibility into what was tested, where failures occurred, and how release risk changed over time.
Automation Challenges:
The client’s automation challenges were highly specific to OT, SCADA, grid management, and manufacturing execution environments.
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Complex SCADA HMI validation
SCADA screens were not simple web pages. They included dynamic graphical objects, alarms, process values, equipment states, real-time indicators, trend charts, faceplates, pop-ups, and operator controls. Validating whether the right object changed state at the right time required more than standard UI automation.
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Event-driven behavior was difficult to automate
Many workflows were triggered by field events, telemetry updates, equipment status changes, alarm thresholds, or simulated device inputs. Traditional automation struggled because the application behavior was asynchronous and dependent on real-time conditions.
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Heavy reliance on simulators and controlled test environments
For safety and reliability reasons, tests could not be executed against live operational equipment. QA teams had to validate workflows using simulators, mocked field inputs, controlled data streams, and isolated environments. Managing these dependencies manually slowed down every regression cycle.
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High variation across customer deployments
OT applications were customized by industry, region, plant, utility network, operator role, asset model, topology, and integration design. A test flow that worked in one environment often required adjustments in another, increasing automation maintenance.
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Multi-layer validation across UI, API, database, logs, and reports
A single operator action could update the HMI, generate an alarm, trigger backend logic, write to historian databases, update logs, and appear in reports. Testing only the UI left gaps. The client needed end-to-end validation across application layers.
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Long regression cycles before product releases
Manual regression for SCADA, Spectrum Power, and Opcenter workflows consumed 10–12 business days across priority modules. This delayed release readiness and increased pressure on QA teams during release windows.
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Domain knowledge was trapped inside manual test execution
Many tests depended on senior QA engineers and OT SMEs who understood alarm sequences, operator controls, grid workflows, dispatch procedures, and manufacturing execution rules. This made onboarding slow and created bottlenecks during peak release cycles.
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Brittle automation from conventional scripting approaches
Earlier automation attempts required high scripting effort and frequent maintenance. Small UI changes, screen layout differences, environment-specific object names, and dynamic controls often broke automated tests.
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Limited traceability for compliance-heavy validation
For utility and industrial customers, validation evidence mattered. Manual spreadsheets and scattered test artifacts made it difficult to show full traceability from requirement to test case, execution result, defect, and release decision.
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Difficulty validating integrations with enterprise systems
SCADA and MES applications did not operate in isolation. They integrated with ERP, PLM, asset management, historian, reporting, identity management, and external operational systems. Validating these workflows required orchestration across multiple systems, not just screen automation.
ACCELQ helped us move from environment-heavy, SME-dependent regression to a scalable automation model that reflects how our OT applications are actually used in the field. We now validate critical workflows faster, with better coverage and stronger release confidence.
- Senior Director, Quality Engineering, Global Industrial Technology Leader
Benefits
ACCELQ helped the client shift from fragmented manual validation to a unified, scalable automation model designed around real business processes and operational workflows.
Unified automation across OT application layers
- ACCELQ enabled the client to automate across UI, API, backend, database, logs, and integration points from a single platform. This was critical for validating workflows where one action in a SCADA or MES screen had downstream effects across multiple systems.
Faster regression for SCADA, EMS/DMS, and MES workflows
- Priority regression cycles were reduced from 10–12 business days to 3–4 business days. This helped the client shorten release validation windows while maintaining stronger coverage across operator workflows, alarms, dashboards, reports, and integrations.
Reusable components for industrial workflows
- ACCELQ’s modular design approach allowed the client to build reusable automation assets for common workflows such as login, role-based access, alarm acknowledgement, asset selection, dashboard validation, production order execution, report generation, and backend verification.This improved reuse across product lines and reduced duplication across WinCC, Spectrum Power, and Opcenter-related test suites.
Reduced automation maintenance
- With ACCELQ’s codeless and AI-assisted automation approach, the client reduced maintenance effort by approximately 45%. Dynamic UI elements, changing layouts, and environment-specific variations became easier to manage without rewriting large script libraries.
Improved coverage of high-risk operational scenarios
- The automation program prioritized scenarios with direct operational impact. This increased automation coverage from less than 25% to approximately 78% across priority business-critical workflows.
Lower dependency on SMEs for repetitive regression
- By converting high-frequency manual scenarios into automated workflows, ACCELQ helped reduce SME involvement in repetitive regression by 62%. SMEs could now focus on complex exploratory scenarios, safety reviews, exception handling, and domain-specific risk analysis.
Better release governance and traceability
- ACCELQ gave the client centralized visibility into automated test assets, execution results, defects, business process coverage, and release readiness. This improved collaboration between QA, product engineering, OT domain teams, and release managers.
Support for simulator-driven testing
- ACCELQ supported automation strategies where simulated field inputs, mocked data, and controlled backend states were used to validate application behavior safely. This was especially important for SCADA and grid workflows where live equipment interaction was not feasible during regression testing.
Improved validation of integrations
- ACCELQ helped automate validation across connected systems, including historian databases, REST APIs, middleware services, identity systems, reporting layers, and enterprise applications. This reduced the risk of silent failures where the UI appeared correct but backend data or downstream transactions were incomplete.
Scalable automation operating model
- The client established a scalable automation framework with reusable building blocks, naming standards, risk-based test grouping, release-specific execution packs, and centralized reporting. This created a more mature quality engineering model instead of isolated automation efforts.
Accelerated Critical Release Cycles
Faster Regression Execution ACCELQ helped compress validation timelines across SCADA, Spectrum Power, and Opcenter workflows without compromising release confidence.
Lower Cost of Quality
QA Cost Optimization Reusable, codeless automation reduced manual effort, test duplication, and maintenance overhead across complex OT application landscapes.
End-to-End OT Validation
Automation Coverage Achieved Business-process automation covered operator actions, alarms, grid workflows, MES execution, backend checks, and enterprise integrations.
Built for Long-Term Scale
Test Asset Reuse Modular automation components enabled reuse across SCADA, EMS/DMS, ADMS, and MES workflows, improving scalability and consistency.
