The closeness and specificity of automatic control system still exist

At present, in the production workshop, enterprises mostly use bus technology to realize the interconnection of automation equipment. However, this method can only solve the basic problems of data acquisition and coordination. For a long time, there are many kinds of hardware equipment involved in the field of industrial automation, such as closeness and specificity, deep binding of software and hardware, inconsistent communication protocol and interface, and poor reusability. If the traditional centralized control method is adopted, different protocols need to be converted. In the process of system integration, the phenomenon of software "hardening" is serious. In addition, for those old equipment, the maintenance and upgrading cost of its control system is expensive, and users can not really go deep into the software environment to break the barriers.

From a market perspective, automation system manufacturers have been evolving around the "hardware + software" binding mode. Even if different products such as PLC, servo and frequency converter of the same supplier often have their own adaptive software, which brings many inconveniences to customers in product selection, programming and product parameter setting, Limited interaction with the controller can only be performed through the configuration tool provided by the supplier.

Today, with the rapid development of IT technology, this closeness and specificity greatly hinder the upgrading and migration of automation control software and the in-depth and efficient integration of OT and it.

How to make the industrial automation system open?

In the era of interconnection of all things, the way out of industrial automation is to promote the application of industrial Internet, realize intelligent manufacturing and establish a fully open and interoperable automation system. To truly integrate it and OT, the primary goal is to fill this gap, completely innovate and integrate into the open automation ecological environment.

Under the strong pull of market demand, industrial automation is bound to change by leaps and bounds, gradually moving from closed to open. The connotation of open automation ecology is standardization and open resource sharing in the automation industry. Through the formulation of various standards, it not only creates good compatibility and cooperation for industrial automation providers, but also brings more flexibility and cost advantages to manufacturing enterprises.

To realize the openness of industrial control system, we must first break down barriers and establish industry standards in the field of automation. For example, IEC61131-3 international standard of PLC programming language is a global standard in the field of industrial control formulated by IEC International Electrotechnical Commission. IEC61131 has been widely used in industrial control for a long time, which is familiar to most programming engineers. However, IEC61131 standard is suitable for single machine operation. To realize the design of distributed control, not only the workload is large, but also a large number of manual modifications are required, and the efficiency is not high.

Another IEC 61499 standard is an executable system level modeling language based on event trigger function block, which provides a standardized packaging method of logic code. IEC 61499 standard has changed the state that control hardware and software have been closely tied together for many years. It not only solves the problems of portability, configurability and interoperability between devices from different manufacturers, but also solves the problem of software and hardware independence.

Accelerating the opening process of industrial automation platform

At present, mainstream manufacturers in the field of industrial automation are committed to breaking the closure and specificity of industrial equipment and launching an open industrial automation platform.

Diastudio, an integrated development platform launched by Delta, replaces the traditional closed development mode, allowing equipment developers to quickly complete the selection, parameter setting, networking commissioning and other operations of delta automation products (such as PLC, HMI, servo, frequency converter, etc.), shorten the system configuration time and improve the design convenience.

Bosch Rexroth eliminates the traditional boundary between machine control system, it and Internet of things with the new Ctrl x automation. With the extensible platform, it can flexibly create centralized and decentralized automation topologies. Through Linux real-time operating system, open standards, application programming technology, web-based engineering and comprehensive Internet of things connection, Ctrl x automation reduces the engineering debugging time and workload by 30% to 50%.

In 2020, Schneider Electric launched the world's leading software centric ecostruxure? Automation expert, an innovative open automation product based on IEC61499 standard. Ecostruxure promotes "plug and play production" in the field of industrial automation through software and hardware decoupling, effectively solves the problems of portability, configurability and interoperability of application software among manufacturers, and promotes the efficiency leap in the field of engineering design and operation.

summary

In general, the construction of open industrial automation standards and platforms is still in the exploratory stage, and there are still deficiencies in application and promotion. Industry standard organizations, automation manufacturers, system integrators and manufacturing enterprises need to work closely together to shape the application ecology of open industrial automation. Looking forward to the future, the opening of industrial automation is an inevitable trend that cannot be stopped. Only in this way can we truly realize the deep integration of it and OT, and industry 4.0, intelligent manufacturing and industrial Internet can move from dream to reality.