Requirements and Concept for a Modular and State-Oriented Control Device Architecture

Abstract One of the main trouble spots of current manufacturing environments is the lack of conformity and consistent and reliable reconfigurability of devices and applications. While basic industrial communication protocols have become standardized, device and software manufacturers still rely on specific and proprietary environments and platforms for administration as well as specific data models and formats for information provisioning and usage. Information models and formats are mostly free in design, defined by engineers, programmers and users. Additionally, organizational software on the office level, which can supervise and instruct the control level, differs vastly in terms of technology and paradigms. The differences become visible in communication and logics: Business and organizational software rely on stateless message- and event-oriented interaction. Control, however, needs a known and finite set of machine-physique-bound states and determinability. This work points out important requirements for software architectures for modern IIoT-oriented control devices and introduces a basic concept to meet them.