CD Laboratory for Software Engineering Integration for Flexible Automation Systems

The optimisation of development environments for modern industrial automation systems is based on industrial tasks. To this end, computer scientists and electrical engineers are conducting interdisciplinary research into improving the technical and semantic integration of software tools and data models.

The implementation of complex industrial automation solutions, such as those realised for production plants or power stations, requires close cooperation between engineers from different specialist areas (domains). These domains include, in particular, process technology, mechanics, electrics and control and process control system programming. The work in these domains is supported by specialised software tools that are often different, i.e. not systematically integrated. These differences significantly limit the productivity of engineering in such heterogeneous development environments.

By distributing the data across different software tools, the engineering process is often only insufficiently visible, analysable, automatable and improvable. This makes it difficult for managers and domain experts of a project to determine the current progress of the project or the specific risk symptoms or to suggest meaningful improvements.

This problem is addressed by a solution approach that works at the "tools", "projects" and "processes" levels. At the "tool" level, the "Automation Service Bus" platform enables the technical integration of the various software tools. Building on this, the semantic integration of data models is made possible at the project level. This allows cross-domain concepts such as signals, devices, positions and alarms to be realised. Furthermore, additional components such as the so-called Engineering Cockpit will also be made possible, which will bring increased visibility, automation and improvement at the level of the entire engineering process.

Overall, this will contribute to the harmonised coordination of different software tools and data models for the development of complex automation systems.