Timo Vepsäläinen

Model-driven development of industrial process control applications

Abstract: This article presents model-driven development and domain-specific modeling applied to the development of industrial process control applications. The approach is based on established practices of the industrial automation and control domain, a compatible UML profile, and an integrated and standards based tool environment for modeling and transformation execution. The methods provide means for developing applications using domain-specific modeling concepts to increase productivity and enhance platform independent solution reuse. The approach has been implemented to support industrial practices and to be able to utilize existing control system platforms. During demonstrations and an assessment event with industry professionals the methods have been successfully applied to the development of small-scale process control applications. In this paper, attention is also paid on discussion of the practical applicability and benefits of the approach for engineering and development of industrial process control applications.

Assessing the industrial applicability and adoption potential of the AUKOTON model driven control application engineering approach

Challenges in software development for automation and control have increased because of various reasons, including the size of applications and competition within the industry. A potential solution could be the use of a model-driven engineering approach to facilitate the development process and design information flow. Despite the wide interests towards model-based techniques in the automation domain, the authors have not been able to find a complete, tool supported UML based MDE approach, the industrial relevance of which would have been systematically assessed. In this paper, we intend to assess the suitability and usefulness of the AUKOTON development process and tools to development of industrial automation and control applications. To study these questions, we organized a laboratory project, in which industrial professionals used our development process and tools, and used qualitative research methods for gathering the industrial feedback.

Tool Support for the UML Automation Profile - For Domain-Specific Software Development in Manufacturing

The development of modern distributed automation applications is challenging and present development practices contain manual transferring of informal information from one phase to another. Our research aims to overcome some of these challenges by integrating concepts from modern object-oriented design, model-driven development and high-level modeling potential of the UML automation profile into a seamless development path from PI-diagrams to control software. This paper presents a prototype of a control engineering tool that supports the UML automation profile and is intended to cover part of the development chain. The tool was implemented on the Eclipse platform and it utilizes various open source tools and frameworks to enable also usage of UML and SysML in modeling work. The implemented tool can be extended by transformation tools capable of processing requirements of the control system and PIM-model of the designed control software.

TopDocs: Using Software Architecture Knowledge Base for Generating Topical Documents

A metamodel-based approach is proposed to filter the information in an architectural knowledge base and present that information in a convenient form for a stakeholder, as a dynamically generated just-in-time document targeted for a specific need.

Challenges in industrial adoption of model-driven technologies in process control application design

Model driven engineering (MDE) technologies are seen as a potential solution to tackle increasing complexity prevailing in developing industrial control systems. Many groups are proposing MDE methods for this application area. Based on company interviews, challenges in industrial adoption of MDE processes and tools have been identified. Our research goal is to gain insight and identify challenges to industrial adoption of MDE technologies in process control application design. AUKOTON MDE process and tool have been used as an example. The paper concludes by proposing refinements to generally accepted MDE goals, in order to better address industrial needs.

Simulation-Based Development of Safety Related Interlocks

Dynamic simulations could support in several ways the industrial automation and control systems development, including their interlocking functions, which constitute an important and tedious part of the development. In this paper, we present a tool-supported, automated approach for creating simulation models of controlled systems and their interlocking functions based on UML AP models of control systems and ModelicaML models of the systems to be controlled. The purpose of the approach is to facilitate manual development work related to model-based development of control systems and to enable early testing and comparison of control and interlocking strategies. The tools and the techniques are demonstrated with an example modelling project and the paper also discusses extending the approach to verifiable safety systems including their security aspects.

Software architecture knowledge management for safety systems

Due to demands for flexibility, cost-efficiency and performance, also safety-related systems are nowadays implemented with software and programmable units as their central parts. In software development, one of the most important development phases affecting the quality of the final products is architecture design. However, related to architectures, many safety publications still focus on issues that are more important in traditional safety systems, e.g. redundancy. In this paper, we focus on architectures of safety systems by extending a general purpose architecture knowledge management (AKM) database with views and functions supporting safety system development. With the resulting AKM database, which is demonstrated with an example application, we foresee it possible to facilitate both the development and certification of safety systems.

Benefit from simulating early in MDE of industrial control

This article focuses on integration of simulations to model-driven engineering (MDE) of automation and control systems and applications. MDE offers means to automate repetitive design tasks and thus improves the efficiency of development work. However, it does not reduce the need for genuine decisions of professional developers to challenging design tasks. Formerly, the decision making has been facilitated with separate process simulations to predict the characteristics of controlled processes. This paper presents and evaluates a new way to seamlessly integrate simulations to early phases in MDE of control applications. On one hand, we argue why and how simulations should be organized in MDE in the domain. On the other hand, we present and summarize observations from the experiments in which our simulation approach has been used.

Towards model-based development of safety-related control applications

Model-based techniques have been recently the topic of numerous publications in different domains. In addition to producing revised models and executable applications, model-based techniques could also aid the understandability of design and consistency between design artefacts. These properties are also focal to development of safety-related applications, in addition to the ability to produce documentation about the systems. In this paper, we strive to create a new model-based approach for development of safety-related applications by integrating risk analysis techniques and modeling notations from several related languages and standards. The notations and their characteristics are compared to the requirements of the vital functional safety standard, IEC 61508, and illustrated with an exemplary modeling case.

Design pattern support for Model-Driven Development

Design patterns document solutions to recurring design and development challenges. UML, as the de-facto modeling language in software development, aims to support defining and using patterns in models. However, as is demonstrated in the paper, the support is not sufficient for all kinds of patterns and all meaningful ways to use patterns. In this paper, the use of design patterns is suggested for documentation purposes in Model-Driven Development. The pattern support of UML is complemented with an approach that does not constrain the structures that can be used in patterns. The approach, which is tool supported in a model-driven development environment for control applications, also enables specification of part of the information content of patterns that UML leaves intact. The developed tool support includes instantiating and highlighting patterns in models and gathering of traceability information on use of patterns.