industrial//industrial ecosystem//OEM

**Original Equipment Manufacturer**: the maker of a specific machine or piece of equipment, compressors, turbines, pumps, packaging lines, robots, CNC machines.

Original Equipment Manufacturer: the maker of a specific machine or piece of equipment, compressors, turbines, pumps, packaging lines, robots, CNC machines.

An OEM delivers a relatively autonomous unit: machine plus its own PLC, sensors, actuators, HMI and software. The machine then has to be integrated with the plant: OEM machine, its own controller, an integrator, the plant SCADA. That seam is where many interoperability problems are born (discrete automation).

The OEM's back end is a business of its own: it buys components from automation vendors, and after the sale it lives on spares, service and upgrades (aftermarket).

An OEM with thousands of connected machines learns things no single plant can see, which makes it both a data source and a party in the negotiation over who owns machine data (fleet data, data holders).