By Bill Lydon, Editor - Automation.com Over the years, automation users have complained about being locked into an industrial automation vendor’s system architecture. ExxonMobil has had enough of proprietary, closed systems and they are leading the charge to build the next generation, multi-vendor automation system. ExxonMobil’s announcement was major news at last week’s 2016 ARC Forum in Orlando, Florida. The Forum’s theme was “Industry in Transition: Navigating the New Age of Innovation.” ExxonMobil has engaged Lockheed Martin to build a multi-vendor interoperable prototype that is a standards-based, open, secure, and interoperable architecture, with commercially available software and hardware components. Lockheed Martin has deep experience with these types of systems from its other business and engineering activities. ExxonMobil is not alone in this quest. Industry 4.0 and Industry 4.0 for Process initiatives in Europe have already adopted some world standards including ISA95...