I originally wrote this post in June 2023 to reflect on the close collaboration between ICONICS and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation—a relationship that officially began in 2000 with an OEM agreement and deepened when Mitsubishi Electric acquired ICONICS in 2019.
At the time of the original blog, we were still operating as ICONICS. Today, we’re fully integrated into the Mitsubishi Electric family as Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions. While our name has changed, the essence of what made our partnership so successful remains the same.
Below is a look back at the values, innovations, and shared vision that brought ICONICS and Mitsubishi Electric together—elements that continue to guide our work as a unified company committed to digital excellence.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation – A Role Model for Continuous Improvement, Innovation, & Sustainability
Mitsubishi Electric was founded in Japan in 1921 and through their continued improvement and innovation has become a leading multinational multi-billion-dollar company with an impressive network of group companies. The company is a global player in electronic equipment manufacturing with products that include semiconductors, electrical parts, and industrial automation systems and parts.
For instance, they offer an extensive range of automation and processing hardware, including:
- Controllers
- Drive products
- Power distribution and control products
- Electrical discharge machines
- Electron beam machines
- Laser processing machines
- Computerized numerical controllers (CNCs)
- Industrial robots
As a result, Mitsubishi Electric solutions bring high quality and productivity to any factory floor. Moreover, since the company has set up global service networks, they can provide direct communication and comprehensive support to customers.
Indeed, the company’s values and mission are intrinsically linked to the company’s Japanese heritage and center around the philosophy of “Contributing to the realization of a vibrant and sustainable society through continuous technological innovation and ceaseless creativity.” This approach allows them to commit to manufacturing products and providing services that positively impact people’s lives and aligns with the belief that their success is “closely tied to the well-being of society as a whole.” The company is also dedicated to operating ethically and sustainably prioritizing environmental and social responsibility along with safety.
In addition, Mitsubishi Electric’s research and development efforts reflect the company’s commitment to quality and innovation. They invest heavily in these two sectors creating products and technologies that meet their customers’ ever-changing needs. By focusing on innovation, the company has realized many breakthroughs in significant areas like artificial intelligence, robotics, and renewable energy. In fact, the company has been recognized for its achievements, especially in product design, research and development, and sustainability.
And they doesn’t just talk about making the world a better place and contributing to sustainability; they walk the walk. For example, Mitsubishi Electric has recently launched its Greater Than initiative geared toward tackling five key sustainability challenges:
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Circular Economy: To achieve a society in which resources are effectively used and sustainably circulated.
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Safety & Security: To achieve a resilent society that can adapt to various envitonmental changes.
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Carbon Neutral: To achieve a decarbonized society by reducing emissions and providing solutions for a net-zero future.
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Inclusion: To achieve a society in which all people are respected and can lead free, fair, and vibrant lives.
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Well-Being: To achieve a healthy and comfortable life for everyone, both mentally and physically.
The Greater Than initiative also applies to becoming a greater company, empowering greater communities, realizing a greater world. This initiative is about doing right and doing good. And besides being known for their commitment to environmental sustainability, Mitsubishi Electric is recognized for their cutting-edge technology and continuous improvement, its high quality and reliability, its diverse product and service portfolio, and their global presence. At their core, they are built on strength and purpose.
That strong foundation became even more powerful with the integration of ICONICS—bringing decades of software innovation into Mitsubishi Electric and advancing their leadership in digital transformation.
A Legacy of Software Innovation – Now at the Heart of Mitsubishi Electric
Backed by more than three decades of experience, cutting-edge technology, and deep industry expertise, we’ve built GENESIS: a world-class automation and digitalization platform used to visualize, monitor, control, and optimize critical assets and spaces. Deployed in over 100 countries and adopted by more than 70% of Global 500 companies, GENESIS drives smarter operations across industrial manufacturing, infrastructure, and the built environment.
But what sets us apart isn’t just our software portfolio—it’s the foundation we’ve built and the people behind it. Our strength comes down to six core areas: our architecture, our commitment to industry standards, our history of innovation, our platform’s extensibility, our dedication to sustainability, and of course, our people and partners.
Our software architecture: GENESIS is engineered for flexibility, efficiency, and scale. Its architecture can securely aggregate and manipulate data, apply language aliasing, and support a wide range of capabilities—from alarming and fault diagnostics to remote monitoring, maintenance scheduling, and workflows. It also includes a powerful, built-in industrial historian that captures and stores high-speed time-series data, giving teams immediate access to both real-time and historical insights without relying on third-party systems. Client technologies allow users to access data securely across any device—desktop, mobile, or even wearable. And integration across the architecture drives engineering consistency and reusability, streamlining development and enabling scale across applications.
Our commitment to industry standards: GENESIS is scalable from edge to cloud and built with universal connectivity. It reads data from a wide range of sources and supports key protocols such as BACnet, BACnet SC, and MQTT/Sparkplug B. Our team has also contributed to the OPC Foundation since its inception, with deep involvement at the board level longer than any other company.
Our proven and continuous innovation: Innovation has always been in our DNA. We were a charter member of the OPC Foundation and the first to launch a 64-bit SCADA application. We introduced multi-touch support in 2009—before the iPad—and pioneered natural user interfaces with voice commands and gesture control. We were also the first automation software provider to adopt Azure Digital Twins. This spirit of innovation continues today. We've been named Microsoft Partner of the Year ten times and have earned industry recognition from Control Engineering, Plant Engineering, Environmental Business Journal, and more.
Our platform’s extensibility: GENESIS adapts to the most complex environments. Whether you need custom connectivity to an obscure data source or unique calculated conditions for alarms and historical logging, our standard platform supports it. And when your use case requires even more, our extensibility toolkit enables full customization across every layer of the architecture.
Our dedication to sustainability: Our software has long supported sustainability by helping customers reduce energy consumption and operate more efficiently. We've twice been recognized as Microsoft Sustainability Partner of the Year for our energy and utilities analysis tools. Today, as part of Mitsubishi Electric, we’re fully committed to the Greater Than initiative—to become a greater company, empower greater communities, and help realize a greater world, with our commitment to sustainability driving our mission to make the world a better place.
Our people and partners: Over the years, our team has proven to be an incredibly capable and creative group. And like the old saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child”—it also takes a village to advance automation and digital transformation to. Our village includes not only out core team, but also our distributors, system integrators, technical partners, and fellow Mitsubishi Electric colleagues—collaborating across regions and time zones to keep our customers' businesses on track with their digital evolution and smart operations.
Together, this foundation of innovation, integrity, and collaboration continues to shape the software at the heart of Mitsubishi Electric—powering digital transformation for industries around the world.
Stronger as One: Mitsubishi Electric’s Unified Approach to Industrial Automation
So why does this integration work—and how is it already delivering impact?
Mitsubishi Electric’s unified team brings deep expertise and decades of experience in industrial automation, manufacturing, and public infrastructure. With a proven track record across these sectors, they know firsthand what products and solutions are required to optimize operations—and they deliver.
This team is also rooted in a shared culture of innovation and advanced technology. From the start, both legacy organizations made it their mission to seek out the latest tools and ideas. Today, that spirit lives on through cutting-edge solutions designed for a fast-evolving market.
This combined capability is especially powerful in the digital transformation space. Mitsubishi Electric’s acquisition of ICONICS expanded their automation software portfolio, positioning them as a full-solution provider—from hardware to cloud. Software offerings like 3D Simulator MELSOFT Gemini, MELSOFT AI MaiLab, and of course the GENESIS Suite now work in concert to deliver scalable, integrated digital solutions.
With operations across the globe, the company offers localized, high-quality support to customers in a wide range of industries—backed by a solid global network and decades of real-world expertise.
Sustainability remains a core pillar. Mitsubishi Electric continues to lead with environmentally conscious practices and technologies, driving improvements in product design, resource efficiency, and long-term impact. As part of Mitsubishi Electric, we proudly carry forward the company’s Greater Than initiative, which strengthens our mission to become a greater company, empower greater communities, and help realize a greater world.
Together, these shared strengths—deep expertise, global reach, a culture of innovation, and a commitment to sustainability—make this integration not just strategic, but transformative.
Leadership Perspective: Why the Integration Made Sense
The alignment between teams, technology, and values was clear from the start—and it was just as clear to our leadership.
When Ted Hill joined ICONICS as President and CEO in 2021, the company was already a Mitsubishi Electric group company, though still operating under its own identity. When asked what drew him to the role, his answer said it all:
“For me, ICONICS was an easy decision. It was about our products; it was about the team. And it's the impact that I believe we'll have globally as part of Mitsubishi Electric. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation recognizes ICONICS as an industry leader in automation software solutions and has positioned the company as its Software Center of Excellence. Through continued investments in IIoT technology and cloud-enabled solutions, the collaboration between our two companies will open new doors for customers and partners along their digital transformation journeys in automation markets around the world.”
His words reflect exactly why this integration made sense—and why it continues to shape the way we deliver value to our customers.
Unified for Impact: One Team, One Purpose
Today, Mitsubishi Electric brings together powerful hardware and award-winning software under one name—to deliver advanced solutions for industrial automation and digitalization. This combination of expertise and technology enables us to offer customers a broader range of products and services, expand our capacity for innovation, and provide more comprehensive support for complex automation challenges.
Sustainability remains a core pillar. At Mitsubishi Electric, we continue to lead with environmentally conscious practices and technologies—driving improvements in product design, resource efficiency, and long-term impact.
And beneath these remarkable capabilities are our people—individuals from around the world who bring diverse perspectives, a collaborative spirit, and creative problem-solving to every solution we create. Together, we form a team that genuinely cares about what we do—and about the world and its communities.
When the right people, vision, and capabilities come together, great things happen.
Learn more about Mitsubishi Electric’s commitment to sustainability and the company’s Greater Than initiative.