The "Fast" in "Small, Fast, Light, Precise": Industrial Software Delivery Is Moving from Projects to Products

Why does industrial software always feel this way:
buying it is fast, but actually using it is especially slow.

The contract is signed, the project kicks off;
research, blueprint, development, implementation, training…
By the time a system goes live, months or even a year have passed.
The question is: can today's enterprises really afford to wait this long?
Especially SMEs.
Orders may change next week, products may switch this month, equipment may need adjustment tomorrow.
Asking an enterprise to spend six months waiting for a system to slowly land?
The business has already changed.
So within "small, fast, light, precise," the word that is truly most underestimated is:
fast.

The recently released MIIT guideline – "Small, Fast, Light, Precise" Digital Products and Services Cultivation Guidelines (2026 Edition) – explicitly calls for making digital products and services faster and lighter, emphasising modular selection, rapid deployment, and out-of-the-box use.

This is essentially challenging a default model of industrial software from the past:
software must always be slowly implemented through a big project.
Why is that?
Because traditional industrial software often sells not just software.
But rather:
software + implementation team + custom development + project cycle.
The more complex the customer, the heavier the implementation, and the larger the project value.
So many industrial software companies are, in essence, still project companies.

But the direction that "small, fast, light, precise" truly promotes is the exact opposite:
turning delivery that previously relied on people into the product's own capability as much as possible.
What does this mean?
In the past, when a customer came:
first research.
then design.
then development.
then configuration.
then training.
then go-live.
In the future, the hope is increasingly to become:

Pick a module → Set a few parameters → Connect the data → Use it directly.

This appears to be merely "faster go-live."
But in reality, behind it is a shift in the business model of industrial software.

In the past:
one customer, one project.
In the future:
one scenario, one product.
In the past, adding one customer meant adding implementation staff.
In the future, if the product is standardised enough, adding 100 customers does not necessarily mean adding 100 units of implementation cost.
This is what makes "fast" and "light" truly powerful.

Of course, this is easier said than done.
Because the industrial site is too complex.
Different equipment, different protocols, different processes, different management habits.
If you redevelop everything to adapt to every single customer,
then you are back on the old path:
it looks like a product, but it is actually still a project.
So true "fast" is not about pushing project managers to work faster.
It is about:
giving the product itself stronger adaptability.
Standard interfaces, modularisation, parameterised configuration, low-code, and increasingly AI capabilities – all are solving the same question:
can we rely less on people and let the product complete more delivery on its own?

This is also why one of AI's biggest impacts on industrial software may not be "adding an AI assistant."
Rather, it is:
reducing the delivery cost of industrial software.
Things that previously required engineers to configure
may in the future be configured by AI;
things that previously required implementation staff to train
may in the future be answered directly by asking the software;
large amounts of custom code that previously required developers to write
may in the future be quickly generated and adjusted through AI.
Only then does "fast" truly become possible.

So you will find:
"Small" solves the question of what software to sell;
"Fast" solves the question of how software is delivered;
and "light" solves:
whether enterprises can afford it, actually use it, and avoid being locked in by a single vendor.

This is also a question particularly worth discussing in the next issue.
Because as software becomes lighter and more open,
what will industrial software rely on to make money in the future?
Next issue: "precise."