Model-driven engineering of industrial process control applications (original) (raw)

Model driven process engineering

25th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference. COMPSAC 2001

Within the domain of information systems, one of the main technological moves we may presently observe in industrial circles is the paradigm shift from object composition to model transformation. This is happening at a very fast pace. Among the concrete signs of this evolution one may mention the ongoing change at the Object Management Group from OMA (Object Management Architecture) to MDA (Model-Driven Architecture). A new information system landscape is emerging that will be more model-centered than objectoriented. Within this context, the information engineer will use and produce many models of low granularity and high abstraction. These models may describe static or dynamic aspects and may be accordingly qualified of product and process models. This paper focuses more particularly on the recent evolution of process models. It shows some aspects of the industrial state of the art in the domain and suggests some benefits that could be reaped from a well-mastered utilization of these techniques.

Model-Driven Engineering Infrastructure and Tool Support for Petrochemical Industry Automation

Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal

The definition of equipment and components of physical plants is a necessary step towards the development of simulation, control, and supervisory applications for the petrochemical industry. Often it happens that the same plant/equipment is (re)modeled on each application, causing a waste-oftime on repetitive (re)design, besides introducing potential inconsistencies between the models. Moreover, even though each software platform normally offers a different view of the same plant, it is desirable to have some kind of interoperability between them. This paper presents a solution for such issues named M4PIA, which consists in a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) tool support developed mainly for petrochemical industry automation. M4PIA allows representing industrial plants by means of different and interchangeable object-oriented models, providing means to perform automatic code generation from a plant specification for different software platforms. Currently, our work involves using M4PIA in high-level automation manouvers and plant simulations. Evaluations studies performed with M4PIA shows that it covers most features expected from a MDE tool suite. Besides, the use of M4PIA is expected to result in less development time and costs, while it increases efficiency, maintainability, and reliability of the developed applications.

Model Driven Development of Process Control Systems Using Uml Profiles Marte and Sysml

2013

Development of effective software application for real-time and embedded systems requires new advanced methods and techniques. This paper presents a model driven approach for development of process control systems based on the UML profile for system engineering – SysML and MARTE profile for analysis and modeling of real-time systems. The suggested approach is illustrated with a simple example for development of tank level feedback control system. Finally some conclusions are made.

Domain specific views in model-driven embedded systems design in industrial automation

2009 7th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics, 2009

The work presented in this paper describes the concept of Domain Specific Views (DSVs) according to which the specification of the control behavior is provided to the control developer. The basic idea is to investigate different application fields, to try to find common rules and models in different fields, and finally to build around this an automatic or semi-automatic transformation into executable code. The original idea is defined in a bigger aim that is the definition of a model oriented to the so-called "automation component", used to standardize the design of an automation system. In the paper, the investigation is discussed for the discrete manufacturing and energy production fields, while in the main project (MEDEIA FP7-2007-211448) other fields are investigated and many languages and methodologies to develop control, diagnosis and simulation of automatic systems have been analyzed. I.

Applying the basic principles of model engineering to the field of process engineering

Novatica–Special Issue on Software Process …, 2004

A new information system landscape is emerging that will probably be more model-centred than objectoriented, characterized by many models of low granularity and high abstraction. These models may describe various aspects of a system such as software product properties, static and dynamic business organization, non-functional requirements, middleware platforms, software processes, and many more. Each model represents some particular point of view of a given system, existing or in construction, and this model conforms to a precise metamodel or DSL (Domain Specific Language). In this paper we present some advantages of using the unification framework of model engineering to deal with the various facets of process engineering. As the view of the software life-cycle is progressively shifting from a simple definition and composition of objects to a sequence of model transformations, the need to characterize this by a precise process is becoming urgent. Description of software artifacts, processes and transformations may all be uniformly captured by different forms of models. This approach provides a regular framework where business and software production process models are going to play an increasingly important role. In this paper we illustrate some possibilities of model-based process engineering.

A tool supported engineering process for developing control applications

Computers in industry, 2006

Engineers in industrial and control sector continuously face problems on developing modern distributed industrial control applications. The latest standard in this domain, the IEC61499, defines a methodology to be used by system designers to construct distributed industrial control applications. New generation Engineering Support Systems (ESSs) are required to support the whole development process. In this paper, a process that introduces new and enhances already defined phases of the IEC61499 development process is presented. Model Driven Development has been adopted and two meta-models have been defined: a Unified Modelling Language (UML) based one that is used in the analysis phase and an IEC61499 based for the design phase. A set of transformation rules, formally defined by means of UML's Object Constraint Language, is defined to ameliorate the transformation process between the two metamodels. The proposed development process is supported by a prototype ESS, namely CORFU ESS, which is used to present a case study. #

CHESS: a model-driven engineering tool environment for aiding the development of complex industrial systems

Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering - ASE 2012, 2012

Modern software systems require advanced design support capable of mastering rising complexity, as well as of automating as many development tasks as possible. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is earning consideration as a solid response to those challenges on account of its support for abstraction and domain specialisation. However, MDE adoption often shatters industrial practice because its novelty opposes the need to preserve vast legacy and to not disband the skills matured in pre-MDE or alternative development solutions. This work presents the CHESS tool environment, a novel approach for cross-domain modelling of industrial complex systems. It leverages on UML profiling and separation of concerns realised through the specification of well-defined design views, each of which addresses a particular aspect of the problem. In this way, extra-functional, functional, and deployment descriptions of the system can be given in a focused manner, avoiding issues pertaining to distinct concerns to interfere with one another.

Towards Automating Model-Based Systems Engineering in Industry - An Experience Report

The 18th Annual IEEE International Systems Conference (SYSCON 2024), 2024

Designing modern Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) is posing new challenges to both industrial practitioners and academics. In this context, adopting cutting-edge paradigms, such as Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), DevOps, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), can offer new opportunities for improving CPS design automation. While such paradigms are already jointly used in the research community to support system design activities, there is a need to fill the gap between academia and industrial practitioners. Indeed, system specification is still mainly performed manually in many industrial projects. In this paper, we present a collaboration between industrial and academic partners of the AIDOaRt European project towards a model-based approach for CPS engineering applied in one of the project use cases. We identify key challenges and corresponding solutions to enhance the automation of CPS design processes. Notably, we consider a combination of prescriptive modeling, model transformations, model views, modeling process mining, and AIbased modeling recommendations. As an initial evaluation, the proposed approach is applied to a practical industrial case study.

Using UML for the development of distributed industrial process measurement and control systems

… , 2001.(CCA'01). Proceedings of the 2001 …, 2001

Software industry increasingly faces today the challenge of creating complex custom-made Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems (IPMCSs) within time and budget, while high competition forces prices down. A lot of proprietary solutions address the engineering process and evolving standards exploit the function block construct as the main building block for the development of IPMCSs. However, existing approaches are procedural-like and they do not exploit the maximum benefits introduced by the object technology. In the context of this work, new technologies in Software Engineering as well as modern CASE tools, which assist to improve the efficiency of software development process, are considered. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) was adopted for the definition of a notation to assist in the design and development of open distributed IPMCSs. The proposed notation constitutes the heart of our object-oriented framework that attempts to improve the engineering process in terms of reliability, development time and degree of automation.

Design patterns for model-based automation software design and implementation

Control Engineering Practice, 2013

The paper presents the application of object-oriented modeling techniques to control software development for complex manufacturing systems, with particular focus on case studies taken from the packaging industry and design patterns that can be abstracted from such case studies. The proposed methodology for control software modeling and implementation is based on a practical approach refined on the basis of on-the-field experience and interactions with control engineers involved in the development projects. The final objective of the paper is to review and analyze patterns for the solution of design and implementation issues that typically arise in the considered application domain.