Fault Handling in PLC-Based Industry 4.0 Automated Production Systems as a Basis for Restart and Self-Configuration and Its Evaluation

Industry 4.0 and Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPS) are often discussed and partially already sold. One important feature of CPPS is fault tolerance and as a consequence self-configuration and restart to increase Overall Equipment Effectiveness. To understand this challenge at first the state of the art of fault handling in industrial automated production systems (aPS) is discussed as a result of a case study analysis in eight companies developing aPS. In the next step, metrics to evaluate the concept of self-configuration and restart for aPS focusing on real-time capabilities, fault coverage and effort to increase fault coverage are proposed. Finally, two different lab size case studies prove the applicability of the concepts of self-configuration, restart and the proposed metrics.

Automatic Visual Leakage Detection and Localization from Pipelines in Chemical Process Plants Using Machine Vision Techniques

Liquid leakage from pipelines is a critical issue in large-scale process plants.Damage in pipelines affects the normal operation of the plant and increases maintenance costs.Furthermore,it causes unsafe and hazardous situations for operators.Therefore,the detection and localization of leakages is a crucial task for maintenance and condition monitoring.Recently,the use of infrared(IR)cameras was found to be a promising approach for leakage detection in large-scale plants.IR cameras can capture leaking liquid if it has a higher(or lower)temperature than its surroundings.In this paper,a method based on IR video data and machine vision techniques is proposed to detect and localize liquid leakages in a chemical process plant.Since the proposed method is a vision-based method and does not consider the physical properties of the leaking liquid,it is applicable for any type of liquid leakage(i.e.,water,oil,etc.).In this method,subsequent frames are subtracted and divided into blocks.Then,principle component analysis is performed in each block to extract features from the blocks.All subtracted frames within the blocks are individually transferred to feature vectors,which are used as a basis for classifying the blocks.The k-nearest neighbor algorithm is used to classify the blocks as normal(without leakage)or anomalous(with leakage).Finally,the positions of the leakages are determined in each anomalous block.In order to evaluate the approach,two datasets with two different formats,consisting of video footage of a laboratory demonstrator plant captured by an IR camera,are considered.The results show that the proposed method is a promising approach to detect and localize leakages from pipelines using IR videos.The proposed method has high accuracy and a reasonable detection time for leakage detection.The possibility of extending the proposed method to a real industrial plant and the limitations of this method are discussed at the end.

Usability Experiments to Evaluate UML/SysML-Based Model Driven Software Engineering Notations for Logic Control in Manufacturing Automation

Many industrial companies and researchers are looking for more efficient model driven engineering approaches (MDE) in software engineering of manufacturing automation systems (MS) especially for logic control programming, but are uncertain about the applicability and effort needed to implement those approaches in comparison to classical Programmable Logic Controller?(PLC) programming with IEC 61131-3. The paper summarizes results of usability experiments evaluating UML and SysML as software engineering notations for a MDE applied in the domain of manufacturing systems. Modeling MS needs to cover the domain specific characteristics,?i.e.?hybrid process, real time requirements and communication requirements. In addition the paper presents factors, constraint and practical experience for the development of further usability experiments. The paper gives examples of notational expressiveness and weaknesses of UML and SysML. The appendix delivers detailed master models, representing the correct best suited model, and evaluation schemes of the experiment, which is helpful if setting up own empirical experiments.

Evaluation of Selected Control Programming Languages for Process Engineers by Means of Cognitive Effectiveness and Dimensions

Different programming languages can be used for discrete, abstract and process-oriented programming. Depending on the application, there exist additional requirements, which are not fulfilled by every programming language. Flexible programming and maintainability are especially important requirements for process engineers. In this paper, the programming languages Activity Diagram, State Chart Diagram and Sequential Function Chart are compared and evaluated with regard to these requirements. This evaluation is based on the principles of cognitive effectiveness and cognitive dimensions. The aim of this paper is to identify the programming language suited best for controlling sequential processes, e.g. thermomechanical or batch processes.

Review of Model-Based Testing Approaches in Production Automation and Adjacent Domains—Current Challenges and Research Gaps

As production automation systems have been and are becoming more and more complex, the task of quality assurance is increasingly challenging. Model-based testing is a research field addressing this challenge and many approaches have been suggested for different applications. The goal of this paper is to review these approaches regarding their suitability for the domain of production automation in order to identify current trends and research gaps. The different approaches are classified and clustered according to their main focus which is either testing and test case generation from some form of model automatons, test case generation from models used within the development process of production automation systems, test case generation from fault models or test case selection and regression testing.

Challenges for Software Engineering in Automation

This paper gives an introduction to the essential challenges of software engineering and requirements that software has to fulfill in the domain of automation. Besides, the functional characteristics, specific constraints and circumstances are considered for deriving requirements concerning usability, the technical process, the automation functions, used platform and the well-established models, which are described in detail. On the other hand, challenges result from the circumstances at different points in the single phases of the life cycle of the automated system. The requirements for life-cycle-management, tools and the changeability during runtime are described in detail.