“Here,” he said, pulling out a drive marked “TIA_10.5_Release_2019.” “Looks promising.”

Maya thought for a moment, then typed an email to the licensing department, attaching the backup inventory and a polite request: “We discovered an unregistered copy of TIA Portal 10.5 in the archive. Could we be granted temporary access for the upcoming project? We can return it once the license renewal is processed.”

In the bustling engineering hub of Dortmund, the hum of machines never ceased. On the fourth floor of a glass‑crowned office building, Maya, a fresh graduate and newly minted automation engineer, stared at a blinking cursor on her screen. The project deadline loomed like a storm cloud, and the only tool that could tame the wild PLC code was Siemens’ TIA Portal — specifically version 10.5, the one that her mentor swore could “talk to the hardware like a seasoned interpreter.”

Maya smiled. The ethics board would be proud. Two hours later, the licensing team approved a temporary, read‑only license for Maya’s workstation, valid for the next five days—just enough time to finish the critical module. They also scheduled a meeting to discuss the long‑term licensing strategy, ensuring the company would not be caught off‑guard again.