Promoting digitalization in industrial automation drives usage of new technologies, communication and information models. Thereby providing a platform for industrial automation to interact cooperatively with information technologies plays a crucial role to increase its digitalization and intelligence. An important factor in this interaction is security. The current automation systems do not cooperate in a high interconnected environment but offer a high security level. In contrast to the current automation systems, the future automation systems in context of Industry 4.0 offer high interconnectedness but require a security solution. The interaction deals with retrieving and processing data from the process control system and sending feedback to it. For retrieving data from automation systems different concepts are discussed such as the NAMUR Information diode. The goal of this paper is to develop a realization of a secure gateway for the interaction of information technology and automation systems. Furthermore, an approach to integrate feedback of information technology into process control is discussed.

In the scope of Industry 4.0 (I40), one goal is the standardized access to asset information and asset services using standardized submodels (submodel templates) in the Asset Administration Shell. Since submodel templates are modeled by different groups of people, the same asset information will be contained in several submodel templates. For automatic generation of new submodels based on existing information from other submodels, model transformation can be a solution. Therefore, in this contribution, we present a guideline on how to develop a new model transformation language for a given use case and apply this guideline to the concrete use case (model transformation for Asset Administration Shells). As a result, we define of the abstract syntax of a customized model transformation language called AASMTL.

Industrial automation architectures have been evolving due to the new requirements in context of Industry 4.0 or other similar paradigms. Interconnectedness and modularity are two factors that play a crucial role in fulfilling these new requirements. The features must be applied to different automation levels and domains. This paper focuses on a service based interaction of MES and process control in a modular an interconnected environment to promote process optimization. Another important factor that must be considered is security. Linking the industrial automation with IT technologies is a basis for optimization and digitalization but it exposes the system to security threats. Retrieving process information for further data processing and online system optimization including the controlled process must be accomplished via an approach that ensures the security requirements of the system. This paper discusses such a secure approach for the interaction between process control, MES and a digital twin application.

OPC Unified Architecture is one of the leading technologies to realize the horizontal and vertical communication from enterprise layer down to the field layer in automation technology. It defines an address space model consisting of nodes and references without specifying how to store these. Therefore, this paper first describes the concept of a nodestore and a nodestore switch. The core contribution of the nodestore switch is the decoupling of OPC UA servers from their node storage. Based on this, four usage scenarios demonstrate how to utilize the concept to address different requirements, like performance and persistence, the integration of domain specific (proprietary) meta models, the adaptation at runtime and sharing of information models. For each usage scenario a prototypical implementation is described to show an exemplary realization and to gather a deeper understanding of the usage.

Industry 4.0 follows the goal of promoting digitalization of manufacturing. Thereby converging information technologies and automation play a crucial role. These goals do not only require new softwares and information models but also require hardwares that offer more intelligence and bring more agility in production systems. The current developments in field of sensors introducing sensor 4.0 is an example of adapting the hardwares to industry 4.0 requirements. This is also necessary for other participating hardwares such as control devices. The control devices must be also designed to act more intelligent and provide interfaces to the other technologies like cloud computing and Cyber Physical Systems. In this paper, a new architecture for control devices will be introduced that operates as a bridge between industrial automation applications and IT technologies and provides a virtual platform for tests and simulations that run parallel to the control procedure. We refer to this architecture as “PLC 4.0”.

Todays engineering processes utilize purchased parts from different manufacturers to set up a product model within engineering tools. As manufacturers provide product data using different catalog services, multiple interfaces have to be implemented to integrate data of purchased parts into engineering tools. By downloading the data into the engineering tool at a certain time, data consistency is interrupted. A holistic solution is still missing. This paper depicts an integrative concept to utilize Industry 4.0 components in the engineering process, allowing an extension of data consistency from manufacturers product descriptions over engineering tools to the product life cycle.

The German initiative "Industrie 4.0" has introduced various new concepts, e.g., Asset Administration Shell (AAS), in the industrial automation which led to the increase of the available information in the network. Retrieving the endpoints where the data is located in the network became an essential task in order to establish an automated information exchange system. Various working groups have been formed to standardize the AAS structure. In this work, we propose a discovery server concept for asset properties using the standardized AAS. We reinforce the presented concept with a prototype implementation that uses queries to retrieve information based on the property value statement model specified in DIN SPEC 92000.

Capability matching is an important objective in automating industrial production. Prior attempts to perform capability matching require the introduction of various new tools rendering them to be hard to achieve or integrate. We propose a capability matching concept that relies fundamentally on the standardized recipes offering a seamless integration into the available infrastructure.

Virtualization is an increasingly used trend in industrial automation to optimize the hardware utilization and ease the scalability of automation systems. In the classic industrial automation, applications are written for a certain operating system and have to be installed on a specific hardware. This increases the number of hardwares. A virtualization by means of a hypervisor provides a possibility to run different applications and their operating systems on the same hardware but in different and independent software-containers. Industry 4.0, a German automation initiative that includes cyber physical systems, requires a certain degree of flexibility that is referred to as changeability. Implementing Industry 4.0 changeable scenarios require flexible automation solutions. A dynamic strategy which enables real time resource-management between these applications is an important factor to optimize the utilization of hardware resources and to make a changeable production possible. The applied method in this contribution allows to run different applications with diverse operating systems on the same hardware while providing them with their necessary resources (computing time, network,...) and managing them according to domain specific requirements. To meet the domain specific requirements, a concept of an infrastructure-application is introduced in this article.

The high complexity and the demand for increased efficiency of process plants as well as the demographic change cause numerous challenges for the plant operators. In addition, Remote Operation, the vast interconnectedness and the increasing plants autonomy as part of the Industrie 4.0 initiative lead to fundamental changes in the working conditions of operating personnel. Hence, new concepts and solutions are required to maintain their capability to act. One possible solution is the application of advanced assistance systems. This article presents a definition and a classification model to describe advanced assistance systems in the process industry. The classification model reveals the solution space for assistance in the process industry, and thereby allows a utilizable design of those.

Industry 4.0 has come up with an impressive number of additional terms and definitions e.g. Asset Administration Shell or Digital Twin. Those terms stand for Industry 4.0 coreparadigms, but their meaning is not harmonized even among experts. This is a source of misunderstanding and confusion. In this paper, the mentioned terms are discussed along the life cycle of a plant. A plant's life cycle comprises the whole process from its idea to its destruction. During the discussion of the terms not only the concepts, but also the visions of Industry 4.0 are clarified. Goal of this paper is not to define additional terms, but to explain and substantiate existing ones and to solve apparent contradictions. Additional outcome of the discussion are architectural recommendations for an upcoming Industry 4.0 architecture. Moreover, suggestions for device manufacturers, system integrators, plant owners and Industry 4.0 architects are given.

Rising cost pressure and increasing engineering efforts reach the automation departments of machinery and plant engineering industry, in this case the rolling mill manufacturer. A suitable way to overcome this challenges is to adapt concepts and procedures from the software engineering domain. To support this process, the authors present the requirements for the next generation automation solution of rolling mills. Afterwards the findings are compared with a survey of the SMS group on the same topic. Utilizing the requirements to find a fitting software architecture and development process to build the needed automation solution are the next steps.

Information exchange requires a common semantic understanding of the meaning of the exchanged data by the involved communication partners. Properties with a predefined and standardized meaning are one pillar of such an information exchange. Another pillar is the exchange of information about relationships between semantic entities by an appropriate system description metamodel. In this paper, we focus on the information exchange of property value expressions. Within the last years, domain-specific lists of properties have been standardized. The development was driven by the need to exchange information of industrial products electronically. The standardized lists allow an unambiguous characterization of products. Results of this comprehensive work done by the standardization committees within the last years are, for example, the international standard series IEC 61360CDD, IEC 61987, and the property library eCl@ss. In these standards, thousands of properties of technical assets are semantically defined. An intuitive and general concept to use these standardized properties for information exchange is crucial for the future system design. One recent approach is the so-called property value statement model. In this paper, the basic concepts of this approach are presented. Additionally, methods to reason about property information in a general way are discussed. The presented concepts fit to the standardized property definition models and build a platform for a metadata-based information handling in the digital factory.

In the last few years, resources sharing has been one of the main focal points of the German initiative “Industrie 4.0”. Resources sharing can be properly guided by load distribution algorithms. With the availability of many load distribution algorithms, it can be an intricate decision to match the use case with the correspondent most fitting algorithm. For an easier matching process, a benchmark is introduced along with the most important quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators that cover the pivot factors that affect the performance factors in the field of engineering automation.

Integrating control development phases requires a consolidated communication architecture. Currently, different communication protocols are used at the different development stages preventing a fully integrated solution to exist. We propose an approach using a unified communication protocol to jointly integrate the control development stages. MATLAB and Simulink were connected to a programmable logic controller successfully resulting in a fully integrated control development chain and opening the doors for further development in other potential areas.

In this paper, a doubly iterative receiver for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is designed to mitigate impulsive interference based on pulse blanking. Although being a very efficient countermeasure, pulse blanking introduces intercarrier interference in OFDM systems leading to system performance degradation. The doubly iterative receiver is designed to overcome this drawback. The inner loop combines iterative demodulation and decoding to cancel intercarrier interference. To make soft information available to the outer loop, the equivalent noise power is derived to employ soft demodulation. The outer loop improves the performance of pulse blanking by performing a hypothesis test, which is used to decide if peaks in the received signal are due to impulsive interference or the large peak-to-average-power ratio common to OFDM signals. This allows to optimize the blanking threshold through maximizing the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio. To evaluate performance and complexity of the proposed receiver, extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is carried out, where EXIT functions for pulse blanker, demodulator, and decoder are derived. An EXIT chart-based trellis search approach is introduced to calculate the loop schedule achieving target bit-error-rate performance with minimized complexity. Numerical results show a considerable bit-error-rate performance improvement as well as a remarkable complexity reduction.

Interoperability is a key feature in today's IT-Environments. To achieve interoperability, the user's actions when connecting two different systems have to be minimized. For this reason, several service based systems have been developed. However, as far as the current implementations in the field are concerned, all of them need connectors and gateways that are individually developed to connect heterogeneous components. In this contribution we develop a description scheme for services that is split into a semantic and a structural part. This enables a semi-automatic generation of such adaptors and establishes interoperability. The description scheme is based on properties which are defined in decentralized repositories. An example implementation for the adaptor-development process is shown.

The fact that normal tasks of control blocks are highly complex and unnecessarily overfitted has led to superfluously high workloads with regard to engineering and development. Existing concepts of variability handling are not designed for this use case. Therefore we present a new variant description model and concept for a control block variant management technique. This concept ensures that the control blocks only have the functionality and complexity that is needed for the actual task. The development and implementation effort is reduced because of the increased re-usability of each control block's functionality.

Scenarios for future industrial production, e.g., cyber-physical production systems, Industrie 4.0 or cloud manufacturing rely on the integration of heterogeneous physical production equipment, automation and IT systems. Moreover, a dynamic reconfiguration of these systems shall be possible without or with minimal work effort and system downtime. These requirements entail the consideration of timing aspects throughout all involved systems, which can ideally be employed by algorithms that support the dynamic reconfiguration. For this purpose, the paper introduces a generic terminology and metrics for the design of heterogeneous real-time systems.

Many tasks in factory automation can be solved with the bare knowledge of used and possible product flow paths in a plant. Unfortunately, the information about these is usually not available explicitly, but is distributed among different models and tools. We present a model that describes discrete product flow paths and aims to play a similarly important role as piping and instrumentation diagrams in process industry. The model's extensibility and its CAEX representation allow a seamless integration into the established model and tool landscapes.

Automation of tedious engineering tasks allows for more efficient plant commissioning and reconfiguration. Usage of knowledge-based systems is one possibility to solve this challenge. We present a rule-based system that is based on declarative graph database queries which have the advantage of being comprehensible by both computer scientists and engineering domain experts. The applicability of the system is verified in two engineering use-cases: the creation of function blocks for basic control and flow path monitoring. Promising results from the first use-case reveal further application fields of the system.

Describing procedures is essential for modeling and controlling technical processes. Although various procedure description methods are available from computer science, system theory and industrial automation, they are only partially suitable as a generic method for engineering automation procedures. In order to close this gap, we propose a procedure description formalism together with a concept of its integration into existing automation systems. By utilizing of the proposed means we obtain an engineerable, generic and user accepted procedure description method.

The flexible application of automation systems in an industrial environment requires new concepts of information exchange in order to keep configuration efforts low. Since the number of networked automation systems constantly increases, the challenge is to make these systems interact without standardizing extensive information models for each and every use-case. As a common and generic tool, system properties are used to model systems and suffice different communication tasks. In this paper, a concept for information exchange by means of services is introduced for property-based system models. The services are specified with respect to function, integration and use. Groups of services that comply with typical applications are identified. The applicability of the services across different domains is illustrated in a use-case scenario.

The interaction between business processes and technical processes is getting more and more important. Throughout this paper, we present how concepts that are used in automation technology can be transferred into concepts that are suitable for use in business process modeling, too. An important aspect is the description of the procedures which have to be executed. In contrast to technical systems, humans as executing agents can, but do not have to follow predefined procedures due to their ability to use their knowledge to work independently in different situations. In a second part, the paper discusses the generation of business processes by project business processes on a meta model, and provides a reference model for a project business layer model.

The P&I diagram (P&ID) shows the product flow structure and the functionality of a process plant. These data are a central base of the downstream control engineering and maintenance processes. We present a model to store these data electronically. Furthermore, the model allows a simple, formal, and unambiguous exchange of P&ID information. It is a bridge between significant information gaps through the information flow between process plant engineering and control engineering. The model is designed in a simple, formal, and unambiguous way. It allows an explicit access to the structural and functional information of the plant. Via this access, the downstream engineering processes can be supported by automatic assistance functions and self-configuration tools. A PandIX model can be created via an XSL transformation, which creates a CAEX file out of a vendor-specific XML file.

The application of a blanking nonlinearity to cope with impulsive interference is a common approach in OFDM systems. The choice of the amplitude threshold to decide whether a received sample is blanked, heavily affects the performance of the entire transmission. As a matter of fact, the perfect blanking threshold strongly depends on the characteristics of the interference. In previous publications this perfect threshold has been derived, given knowledge about the interference statistics. In general, however, no reliable information about the interference statistics is known at the receiver side. In this paper a practical method for calculating an adaptive blanking threshold to maximize the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio after the blanking nonlinearity is proposed. The calculation is based on the distribution of the amplitude of the received signal at the OFDM receiver. Simulation results show only a negligible performance degradation when comparing the proposed method to the case where the theoretically derived perfect threshold is applied for blanking.

Software of various domains needs to access information on assets in an industrial facility. For this purpose, it is not only necessary to provide the required technical infrastructure, but also to have a common understanding of the way assets are modeled. Since globally valid models are currently not available, sharing asset information between different software tools is hard to accomplish. In this paper, a basic model for information on assets is introduced, which only involves the common, fundamental concepts. The model is described both on a semantical level and with respect to its implementation. Finally, an outlook on the integration in a service-oriented architecture is given.

Current process control and automation systems are statically linked and strictly hierarchical, built between a central engineering station, several PLCs and a wide range of I/O devices. If any intended or unintended changes within this system occur, a large amount of configuration has to be changed. This needs to be reduced by (semi-)automatic mechanisms to establish a self-management and self-configuration environment for such systems. Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is a widely used concept for developing such a flexible and dynamic system, where even topological and hierarchical changes of software and hardware components could take place during run-time, thus without stopping the production process. This paper describes the requirements for a resource description model, which needs to be investigated to determine (along with their Quality of Service) a suitable and maybe optimal distribution via the different resources of a future SOA-based automation system.

In this paper, we analyze the influence of a blanking nonlinearity onto OFDM systems in detail. We will derive closed-form expressions for the signal degradation and the interference, which is introduced by the blanking nonlinearity. The theoretical results will be validated by simulations, which illustrate the detrimental blanking influence in a descriptive way. In addition it will be shown how the results affect an OFDM receiver and how the receiver can be adapted to the blanking nonlinearity. Simulation results confirm a gain of 3 dB at BER=1·10-3for a 16QAM transmission, when adapting the receiver accordingly.

This article describes how the service-oriented approach could be adopted to the automation environment. The concept of services could be used to classify services of large, heterogeneous systems. One of the main aspects of services is the dynamic assignment and usage at runtime. Taking this into account, dynamic, flexible and scalable systems could be designed. It is shown how the hardware-related capabilities could be seen as a domain independent layer, which builds a solid basis for the class of domain services and how this helps to formalise their demands. Subtasks of the overall system could be encapsulated as service and - by defining interfaces - used independent of the realisation. Via the presented classification approach the architecture principle of services provides a mechanism to realise new, vertical integrated applications.

In process control engineering, the multiple forms of the process control functionalities and the technological constraints of the programming languages are a significant obstacle for designing control logic which is integrated and comprehensive throughout the hierarchical control levels. Furthermore, the engineering phase requires a high degree of expert knowledge and effort. This article presents a conceptual approach for an integrated management of the distributed process control functionalities based on service orientation. The main advantage of this approach is that the fixed interconnections of the control logic are extended with a dynamic assignment of services. With a multifunctional Modular Electric Reducing Furnace as case study it is shown, that by using service-orientation, a reliable, flexible and scalable process control structure can be easily constructed.

During the plant's life cycle, plenty of information is generated manually and automatically, not only in the stage of plant operation. Such information concerns all entities which can be described by property models, for example field devices, functional roles from the P&I-Diagram or even software units for process control. This article presents an approach to model these distributed properties in an integrated way. Property information is modeled by statements, which contain important semantics to support diagnosis and asset management related functions. In addition, the model may be used to automatically gain property values of a plant element which does not offer this information a priori. Typically, we address non-intelligent plant elements like pumps or other devices, that do not offer their own measurements. The presented algorithm is designed in a modular way which minimizes the engineering effort and scales with the plant complexity. The approach is already implemented within an industrial environment, realizing a fully automated monitoring application for pumps in a German BP refinery.

The increasing number and range of automation functions along with the decrease of qualified personal makes an upgraded engineering process necessary. This article gives a general overview of one approach, called the automation of automation, i.e. the automated execution of human tasks related to the engineering process of automation systems. Starting with a definition and a model describing the typical engineering process, some solutions for the needed framework are presented. Occurring problems within parts of this process model are discussed and possible solutions are presented.

When pulsed interference is mitigated by means of pulse blanking, interference is reduced significantly. However, at the same time certain fractions of the useful orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signal are erased. Consequently, only moderate improvements are achieved with pulse blanking. When representing the pulse blanking operation as multiplication with a rectangular window exhibiting notches at the positions where blanks are inserted, it becomes obvious, that pulse blanking mainly leads to inter-carrier interference (ICI). In this paper, the compensation of the impact of pulse blanking is proposed by reconstructing and subtracting ICI. The required shape of the subcarrier spectra is derived from the pulse blanking window. For an estimation of the transmitted data symbols and the channel coefficients of each subcarrier an iterative receiver structure is proposed. Simulation results at hand of a realistic interference scenario show that with perfect channel estimation and known data symbols the impact of pulse blanking can be reduced to a small loss in signal-to-noise ratio resulting from the energy loss due to erasing a certain fraction of the OFDM signal. With real channel estimation and estimated data symbols, the ideal case with perfect channel estimation and known data symbols is approached by 1.2 dB after only three iterations.

We present an approach for modelling, computing and using information about product flow paths in processing plants. We first present a formalisation of our model of product flow, which is plant-oriented and only considers the possible spatial displacement of the material. The concept of product flow paths, which represents an important aspect of the semantics of a process, is derived from this model. We then present a method for the analysis of product flow paths in a plant which is based on classical search theory, is inspired on algorithms from routing in computer networks and from compilers, and is implemented in a fully decentralised manner by means of function block diagrams. With this, a simple, flexible and robust technique for yielding up-to-date information about product flow paths is achieved, which may be used by applications to provide additional functionalities.

The informational bookkeeping of pumps is of particular interest for a wide range of applications in operative process control engineering. The integration of pump information in process control, in plant asset management and energy management applications, generally opens a large potential for improved maintenance as well as for process and plant optimisation. The important role of pumps in industry demand a standardisation of pump information in form of a general device profile especially due to the multitude of available field busses and various software interfaces in process control engineering. A general approach implicates independence from communication specific characteristics and validity for liquid and vacuum pumps in various industrial application fields. Such a device profile for pumps is not available yet. The lack of overall standards leads to enhanced investments for the pump type management on manufacturer side and to a laborious system integration for plant operators. The article describes the structure and the information model of a pump profile specified by the working group "Generic Device Profile for Pumps" of Pumps and Systems Association and Section Vacuum Technology within the VDMA. The information model and its XML representation provide a basis for a comprehensive standardisation and a potential for the simplification of a wide range of applications in process control engineering

In already installed fieldbus instrumentations, a configuration-free and manufacturer-independent access to field device information sets is still missing. Due to the lack of suitable and simple models, as well as of interaction patterns of field devices in various information worlds of process control engineering, the practical use made of device novelties is rather complex. This affects high investments for engineering this information in various applications of process control engineering. Modern field devices contain embedded information sets that are ever-increasing, and provide great opportunity for innovative asset management functionality. In this paper we present an information server, serving as an additional information channel between field and plant level in process industry. We show that this so-called asset management box provides the configuration-free analysis of fieldbus segments, the open access to installed field devices and the automatically updated, structured and self-descriptive presentation of their embedded information sets. Its basic functionality fulfills one prerequisite of an efficient asset management system: the analysis of the actual state of a fieldbus installation, without prior knowledge about the installed field devices and enhanced investments in engineering. We discuss several asset management applications, implemented on the asset management box. To prevent excessive investments for engineering of asset management applications themselves, widest flexibility and extensibility of the management systems' functionality is required. The box's structure permits easy extensibility of plant and client-specific applications as well as the easy integration of specific fieldbus hardware, the box provides a universal fieldbus interface.

Effective solutions for asset management become increasingly important in modern automation and control systems. They are especially required in the area of process control. The control systems used here usually consist of PLC-based networks, which are optimised concerning the special temporal and topological requirements of the process. Asset management functions have to be introduced to those systems, without any influence on the existing equipment. The paper shows an object-oriented solution based on PROFIBUS-PA device. By automatically evaluating a system structure and mapping the profile-relevant parameters of devices to proxy objects, different application modules for asset management functions can be implemented acting on these objects.