Analyzing the industrial scalability of backwards compatible intralogistics systems

The (re-)development of industrial production systems has to deal with high flexibility due to customers’ demands as well as constraints such as the dimensions of the manufactory. Therefore, Intralogistics systems, which transport goods or products between machine tools in the production system, must also be flexibly assembled to fit into the given space. This presupposes that parts of the Intralogistics system, such as a belt conveyor, may be modified or exchanged by different ones and with less effort. Additionally, due to the different lifespans of mechanical, electrical and software components, often electrical devices need to be replaced by other ones during operation as a result of lacking availability thanks to shorter life cycles. Nowadays in industry, a manual adaptation of the control software is necessary after the exchange of an electrical/mechanical device with a newer one. In order to ease the software adaptation, in this paper an automatic analysis of the differences between incompatible software and an adaptation approach focusing on the functional behavior of the software is introduced. After identifying seven interaction points of the control software that need to be adapted, the approach is evaluated with an industrial case study and feedback from industrial experts to prove industrial scalability.