Methods improving software design efficiency for flexible industrial automation

Abstract

The industrial automation world has shifted from mass production to mass customisation. Automation systems need to be flexible, modular, and efficient more than ever before and in order to support these paradigm shifts and changes, the need for software-defined automation has been drastically increasing.

This thesis presents methods and tools that help improve the efficiency of software design for flexible industrial automation. The IEC~61499 standard for vendor agnostic distributed automation is used as the technology standard to develop the proposed methods. First, we discuss the need to optimise design efficiency when developing, debugging, testing, and maintaining industrial automation code. Different design patterns and software constructs are proposed that help increase reuse of software components, make systems more flexible and modular, and improve debugging and error handling capabilities. All contributing towards improving the software design efficiency.

Next, we discuss the importance and effect of interoperability for flexible industrial automation systems. Vendors need to integrate state-of-the-art technologies in order to keep up with market changes. However, traditional automation systems, being rigid in nature, act as a barrier to higher levels of interoperability. We discuss the use of standardised interfaces that help achieve higher levels of interoperability and analyse its effect on overall system efficiency.

Finally, in this thesis, we propose software driven reconfiguration of manufacturing systems aimed at reducing the downtime and error rates when handling systems that are dynamic in nature.