Abstract: An emulator of an industrial plant controller includes: an emulation unit, comprising an emulation engine; a structural configuration unit, for configuring the emulation engine so as to define an architecture of a controller of a plant, the architecture comprising a plurality of operating modules organised in nodes and at least one loop; a functional configuration unit for configuring the emulation engine by means of sets of instructions directly uploadable to the controller and assigned to respective operating modules, so as to define controlling functions of the plant. At least one operating module defined in the emulation engine comprises an interpreter for performing the instruction assigned to the operating module.