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The complete toolkit for your Unified Namespace

Give every plant one source of truth, and every system the same language. FlowFuse connects the machines you already run and turns their data into live information your whole business can act on. Build your UNS once, then roll it out to every site.

Diagram: PLCs, machines and SCADA feed into FlowFuse, which connects, collects, transforms and contextualizes their data and transports it through a built-in MQTT broker to MES, ERP and AI.

Over 36,000 users have trusted FlowFuse

Where UNS projects get stuck

One source of truth sounds simple. The trouble starts when you try to build it, and it usually starts in the same six places.

  1. 01

    Most machines don't speak MQTT

    Legacy PLCs, SCADA and serial devices get left out of the namespace because nothing reads them.

  2. 02

    Point-to-point links keep breaking

    Every new system needs a custom link to every other system, and each one breaks on its own.

  3. 03

    Raw values have no meaning

    A register address like %MW104 tells the MES, the dashboard or the analyst nothing at all.

  4. 04

    Every layer is a separate product

    The broker, the integrations and the applications each need their own tool, vendor and team.

  5. 05

    The topic tree drifts

    As more teams publish, topic names and payloads stop matching and consumers break.

  6. 06

    Every plant starts from scratch

    What worked at the first site gets rebuilt by hand at the next, and the two drift apart.

Every layer of your UNS, in one platform

Each of those problems lives at a different layer. FlowFuse answers every one, so you build your whole UNS in one place instead of stitching together a separate tool for each layer.

A FlowFuse flow reading Siemens S7, Allen-Bradley, OPC UA and Modbus sources and publishing them to UNS topics

Connect & Collect

Bring every machine into the namespace

A UNS only works if every machine publishes to it, and most plant equipment doesn't speak MQTT.

  • Connect over certified OPC UA, Modbus, Siemens S7 and EtherNet/IP nodes, plus 5,000+ other integrations
  • Read from PLCs, SCADA and historians without changing a line of PLC logic
  • Collect at the edge, right beside your machines, and send a value only when it changes
Explore industrial integrations
Before: raw PLC registers HR 0 = 2, HR 2 = 119, HR 3 = 285, HR 4 = 62143, HR 7 = 630, HR 8 = 39, HR 9 = 4998. After FlowFuse, in your UNS: state Run, speed 119 bottles/min, bottles filled 18,739,903, tank level 63.0 %, product temp 3.9 °C and fill volume 499.8 ml

Transform & Contextualize

Give every value a name, a unit and a place

A raw register means nothing to the MES, the dashboard or the analyst reading it.

  • Rename cryptic tags: %MW104 becomes filler/temperature in °C
  • Organize every value by site, area, line and machine, following ISA-95
  • Give MES, dashboards and analysts data they can use without a tag list from the PLC programmer
Explore data integration
Add a new Broker in FlowFuse: choose the built-in FlowFuse Broker, recommended and with 20 MQTT clients included in your plan, or bring your own MQTT broker

Transport

Run your namespace on a built-in MQTT broker

The broker is the hub of a UNS, where every producer publishes and every consumer subscribes.

  • Use the MQTT broker built into FlowFuse, with nothing extra to install
  • Or keep the MQTT broker you already run and manage it from FlowFuse
  • Run plain MQTT and Sparkplug B in the same namespace
Explore IT/OT integration
The FlowFuse broker topic hierarchy, from enterprise to plant, area, line, cell, PLC and sensor, with an Open Schema button for the auto-generated schema

Browse & Manage

Keep the namespace consistent as it grows

A UNS falls apart when every team names topics its own way.

  • See every topic in your namespace as a live tree
  • Get topic schemas generated from live data and documented for you
  • Give every team, at every plant, the same documented structure to build against
Explore the FlowFuse platform

AI

Map thousands of tags in minutes, not weeks

Mapping tags into a hierarchy is the slowest part of building any UNS.

  • Describe your register map to FlowFuse Expert, and it builds the flows that name, scale and place every tag
  • Or connect the AI agent your company already approved, such as Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT, to do the same work
  • Nothing is deployed until an engineer has reviewed and approved it
Explore FlowFuse AI
The FlowFuse home screen: 76 hosted and 40 remote instances running across plants, from packaging line monitoring and OEE dashboards to plant edge gateways

Manage & Scale

Run every plant's UNS from one place

A UNS proves itself on one line and pays off only when every plant runs it the same way.

  • See every plant's instances, versions and changes in one view
  • Promote changes from dev to test to production, with one-click rollback
  • Roll the proven setup out to the next site without rebuilding it
Explore remote device management

Built to pass IT review at every plant

Rolling your UNS out to every plant means IT has to approve each one. FlowFuse is SOC 2 Type I and Type II certified, with single sign-on, role-based access, audit logs, and self-hosted or air-gapped options for sites that can't use the cloud.

Review our security and compliance details

SOC 2 Type II

Single Sign-On

Audit Logs

Role-Based Access Control

Air-Gapped / Self-Hosted Deployment

You're never alone, and never locked in

Software is only half of a UNS rollout. We become part of your team from the first plant, and stay long after the last one goes live.

  • Built with your team

    Our engineers work alongside yours to design the namespace and deliver the first plant, then stay close whenever a site needs help. See how we build with your team.

  • No lock-in, ever

    FlowFuse is built on open-source Node-RED and MQTT. Your flows, topics and schemas belong to you, and your team can change them without waiting on us.

  • Your team grows with it

    Your engineers learn by building alongside ours, and come away able to run and extend it on their own.

From IT and OT teams

What customers say about FlowFuse

A UNS succeeds when OT gets every machine connected and IT can govern it at scale. Here's how both teams describe taking FlowFuse from one site to many.

Read customer stories
“We started using Node-RED at the plant level, but FlowFuse is what turned it into an enterprise-grade solution. Everything runs centrally from corporate IT, across multiple plants, with the dev and production pipelines and controls our organization requires.”

James Wise

Sr. Product Owner, Milliken & Company

IT
01/06

Unified Namespace and FlowFuse: FAQs

Start with the line that's hardest to connect

Tell us what equipment it runs. We'll show you its data in your namespace, named and in context, and how the same setup reaches every other site.