PLCopen is a vendor- and product-independent worldwide association. Its mission is to be the leading association resolving topics related to control programming to support the use of international standards in this field. For this PLCopen has several technical and promotional committees. The committees working within PLCopen are listed on the left side.

One of the core activities of PLCopen is focused around IEC 61131-3, the only global standard for industrial control programming. It harmonizes the way people design and operate industrial controls by standardizing the programming interface. A standard programming interface allows people with different backgrounds and skills to create different elements of a program during different stages of the software lifecycle: specification, design, implementation, testing, installation and maintenance. Yet all pieces adhere to a common structure and work together harmoniously. The standard includes the definition of the Sequential Function Chart (SFC) language, used to structure the internal organization of a program, and four inter-operable programming languages: Instruction List (IL), Ladder Diagram (LD), Function Block Diagram (FBD) and Structured Text (ST). Via decomposition into logical elements, modularization and modern software techniques, each program is structured, increasing its re-usability, reducing errors and increasing programming and user efficiency.