Industrial automation is entering a new era of the Industrial Internet with enhanced computing, communication, and storage capabilities provided by cloud computing and field devices. The paradigm of automation systems is shifting from the ISA-95 pyramid to the two-layers architecture: industrial cloud and edge computing. Industrial software is also evolving under the new architecture in ways for which dedicated software applications are no longer suited. Service-based industrial cloud and edge applications provide maximum flexibility, interoperability, and efficiency by combining the IEC 61499 standard, microservice architecture, and container technology. This article provides orchestration methods and deployment procedures for the OT-IT hybrid industrial edge applications. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by an industrial case study with accompanying performance analysis.

This work analyzes the problems that arise in IEC 61499 development due to the fact that there are no ways of structuring type libraries. As a result of this analysis we derived requirements for integrating modules into the IEC 61499 specification. The modules that are portable among several runtime providers and vendors can be imported into IEC 61499 systems. Every module contains a set of function blocks that can be used inside the application. The proposed IEC 61499 module has its own version and namespace. It is also capable of defining dependencies on each other. Reusability from types can be increased by dividing the type library into several parts with the help of the proposed modules.

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are becoming common in the industrial automation domain. In industrial CPS, distributed programmable logic controllers collaborate to control manufacturing plants. Design and analysis of such systems require a system model that covers control, computation, and communication with physical plant dynamics. This paper focuses on execution semantics for industrial CPS with the aim of providing a deterministic and platform-independent execution environment. A discrete-event-based execution semantics augmented with timestamp mechanism is proposed for IEC 61499 to provide deterministic behavior and guarantee compliance with real-time constraints for industrial CPS. The timestamped discrete-event-based execution semantics is implemented in an IEC 61499 runtime with service-enabled features. A case study of building automation system is used to prove the proposed semantics.

With rapid improvement in information and communication technologies, industrial automation systems are under the revolution. Legacy industrial automation systems lack flexibility and interoperability due to multi-layered architecture. From industrial cyber-physical system point of view, a new system architecture is needed to allow vertical and horizontal integration between all devices and systems from enterprise level to sensor level. In this paper, a RESTful service-oriented architecture is proposed for industrial controllers. By adopting RESTful services over HTTP methods, better efficiency for data acquisition from sensors, actuators, and controllers is achieved. In addition, service-oriented device management for industrial controllers is also implemented along with data acquisition. The reference architecture experiments on a car manufacturing demonstration line.

An increasingly important goal of industrial automation systems is to continuously optimize physical resource utilization such as materials. Distributed automation is seen as one enabling technology for achieving this goal, in which networking controller nodes collaborate in a peer-to-peer way to form a new paradigm, namely industrial cyber-physical systems (iCPS). In order to achieve rapid response to changes from both high-level control systems and plant environment, the proposed self-manageable agent relies on the use of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) that improves flexibility and interoperability. It is enhanced by the autonomic service management (ASM) to implement software modifications in a fully automatic manner, thus achieving self-manageable and adaptive iCPS. The architecture design of the ASM is provided and integration with SOA-based execution environment is illustrated. Preliminary tests on self-management are completed using a case study of an airport baggage handling system.

Service-oriented architecture is increasingly applied in industrial cyber-physical systems to provide better flexibility and interoperability between various systems and devices. In the previous work ([3]) a service-based execution environment for IEC 61499 is proposed to enhance flexibility and interoperability in distributed automation systems. In this paper, we discuss questions raised by some readers, for example, performance overhead of the proposed method. Also, other clarifications are made in order to address possible confusions expressed in the received comments.

Cyber-physical systems show their impacts in many areas including industrial automation. Design and analysis of cyber-physical automation systems requires an integral model that takes into account tight coordination of control, communication and physical plants dynamics, thus creating a new research domain, namely industrial cyber-physical systems. This paper proposes a new execution semantics for the IEC 61499 standard that is based on the concepts of discrete-event systems augmented with timestamping of events to guarantee real-time constraints for industrial cyber-physical systems. The proposed execution semantics is implemented in an IEC 61499 execution environment and a case study on building automation systems is used to verify the results.

In recent years, requirements for interoperability, flexibility, and reconfigurability of complex automation industry applications have increased dramatically. The adoption of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) could be a feasible solution to meet these challenges. The IEC 61499 standard defines a set of management commands, which provides the capability of dynamic reconfiguration without affecting normal operation. In this paper, a formal model is proposed for the application of SOAs in the distributed automation domain in order to achieve flexible automation systems. Practical scenarios of applying SOA in industrial automation are discussed. In order to support the SOA IEC 61499 model, a service-based execution environment architecture is proposed. One main characteristic of flexibility-dynamic reconfiguration-is also demonstrated using a case study example.

Improvement of flexibility and interoperability is a usual concern of industrial automation systems developers. Service-oriented architecture is one approach promising improvement of flexibility and interoperability in existing distributed automation systems. However, the intelligent self-managing features cannot be fully achieved by just applying the service-oriented architecture. In order to improve efficiency and reliability of distributed automation systems, the service-oriented architecture is extended in this paper by autonomic service management. The design of the autonomic service manager is provided and some key features such as self-configuration, self-healing and self-optimization are demonstrated. The design of a flexible and interoperable execution environment is also illustrated. Some preliminary tests are completed with a case study.

The complexity and scale of automation industry applications have increased substantially in recent years, posing new challenges to fulfill growing requirements for reusability, interoperability, flexibility and reconfigurability. The adoption of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) could be a feasible solution to meeting these challenges. Based on a comparison between the conceptual frameworks of SOAs versus modern standards for distributed automation, a methodology is proposed for the application of SOAs in the distributed automation domain. The implementation of the Service-Oriented Architecture based PLC execution environment is demonstrated on a case study.

The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), initially developed for general purpose computing, is becoming increasingly popular in industrial automation, especially due to the growing importance of distributed measurement and control systems, Internet of Things and wireless sensor network infrastructures. There are two serious gaps in the current implementations of SOA for automation: the lack of a proper standard form for representing the logical relation between services at the system level, and, in particular, lack for a proper visual representation format enabling intuitive understanding and reconfiguration of services during the system lifecycle. In this paper, it is shown how these gaps can be filled using the IEC 61499 function block architecture in the most intuitive and natural way. The ideas are illustrated on example of systems, composed form intelligent mechatronic devices. Such features, as software reuse, flexibility, reconfigurability and scalability are demonstrated. The paper shows complementarity of the SOA and IEC 61499.

Distributed control systems are widely deployed to all areas in industrial automation. However, a systematic approach to the design and programming of distributed automation and control systems is not clearly defined. This paper analyzes the differences between two control system architectures defined in IEC Standards — IEC 61131-3 for centralized control with programmable controllers (PLCs) vs. IEC 61499 for the use of function blocks (FBs) in distributed automation and control — in an attempt to identify the essential elements — the sine qua non — for such programming. Through this analysis, two indispensable elements — software modularity and the use of communication services — are identified. Guidelines are given for the use of these elements in both PLC and FB systems, and the application of these guidelines is illustrated in a case study of airport baggage handling systems.

The standard IEC 61499 claims to be a standard for a distributed control environment consisting of a set of heterogeneous control devices from different vendors. Previous work on the implementation of IEC 61499 pointed out ambiguities in the standard, resulting in different execution behavior of IEC 61499 elements on different control devices. One of the key deficiencies is the lack of a definition for execution models of the device, the resource, and the function blocks. This paper discusses different design and execution issues related to the aforementioned problems for IEC 61499 distributed automation and control systems.

Professionals' assessments on the usefulness of IEC 61499 depend on several factors that are outside of the scope of the standard. Automation design in the industry is largely routine work that is based on copying and modifying existing domain-specific solutions, so the lack of legacy software exacerbates learning difficulties. Other factors such as team organization and the development environment also strongly affect the experience of using IEC 61499. The goal of this paper is to identify how a designer's framework needs to change before IEC 61499 can be applied successfully. Two differently organized IEC 61499 courses for professionals and researchers are described, and the impact of the educational approach on a positive experience for professionals is discussed.

Open knowledge economy in intelligent industrial automation (OOONEIDA) is a new initiative for enabling decentralized, reconfigurable industrial control and automation in discrete manufacturing and continuous process systems. The goal of the OOONEIDA project is the creation of the technological infrastructure for a new, open knowledge economy for automation components and automated industrial products. This will be done by further development of the concept of reusable portable software modules (function blocks) and by their application in the time- and cost-effective specification, design, validation, realization, and deployment of intelligent mechatronic components in distributed industrial automation and control systems.