A Methodological Approach to Model-Driven Design and Development of Automation Systems

The growing complexity of industrial automation demands the adoption of software engineering principles for improving the development process of control systems. This paper presents a methodological approach to the design and development of complex automation systems relying on model-driven engineering (MDE). A benefit of this approach is the integration of methods and techniques widespread within the automation discipline with modern MDE techniques guiding the designer through the development phases. A second advantage is to add flexibility enough to adapt the steps to the needs of the system under design. Finally, the architecture presented is prepared to be adapted to methodology extensions to cover other aspects of automation systems. The framework is based on domain models that are defined through the development phases using the terminology of the automation field. Using model transformations both documentation about system analysis and design and the skeleton of software units are automatically generated. A proof-of-concept tool has been developed that has been tested on the design of medium-complexity projects to assess the impact of its use with respect to project documentation and maintenance.Note to Practitioners—Control software development can be considered one of the challenges in automation field for achieving leadership in the future economic market. This work presents a model-driven engineering-based approach making use of both automation and software engineering methods and techniques for developing automation control systems. The framework implements the methodology for industrial automation systems ( ${\rm MeiA}_{\bullet }$ ) for guiding developers through the development phases and generates the analysis and design documentation using domain terminology, the design documentation that involves the minimal units of design, and the program organization units in one-to-one correspondence with the minimal units of design. From a practical point of view, it should be highly emphasized that developers of automation projects benefit from more structured designs, reduced number of errors, and improved project documentation.