DEVEKOS: Consistent engineering for safe, distributed and communicating multi-component systems

In the course of digitization and industry 4.0, fully networked and in real-time communicating automation systems become reality. Thanks to the miniaturization of electronic components, control, actuators and sensors can now be integrated into automation components in a confined space. Due to the embedded software such components become intelligent and communicative modules. These intelligent components offer their own abilities (skills) in the form of manufacturer-standardized automation functions. These skills can be used and further composed by the engineer during the engineering phase in order to create higher-quality skills until a specific level of skill is reached that fits to the process of the product being produced. This approach results in a component-based automation with a suitable component-oriented engineering - both are prerequisites for the implementation of the currently emerging industry 4.0 standards. This procedure requires a new dimension of networking, which must simultaneously meet the high demands on real-time capability and component communication at a high, semantically annotated level. Intelligent and distributed automation components replace the central control. This lead to an event-driven and skill-based communication.

From such a networked and skill-based system, there are numerous advantages in the complete life cycle e.g. of a production plant: from technical sales, engineering phases and production to changes and disassembly. Even in technical sales a system can be designed to be independent of the manufacturer and purely functional by means of standardized automation functions.

However, this vision is currently opposed to barriers in industrial practice, which is mainly due to unresolved issues of the highly distributed and real-time capable communication network and the lack of continuity during the engineering process. Therefore, the objectives to be achieved in DEVEKOS are as follows:
 

• Robust, secure and real-time communication solutions for industry
• Consistent and function-oriented engineering
• 3D technologies for industrial applications

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