When it comes to industrial digital transformation, an unavoidable problem is the island phenomenon, especially the gap between it and ot.
The reason is that there are few technicians who understand it and ot.
The other is the technical standard factor and the closed mentality of major manufacturers. Compared with the rapid development of IT field, the technology renewal cycle in OT field is longer. The traditional industrial automation systems are basically developed based on the principles of the 1970s and 1980s. These industrial automation systems are relatively closed, and the products of different suppliers are incompatible with each other. With the continuous acceleration of the digital process, the closeness and specificity greatly hinder the upgrading, migration and innovative application of industrial automatic systems, as well as the in-depth and efficient integration of it and OT, which also increases a lot of costs for users.
Obviously, the invariable industrial automation system has been difficult to meet the needs of interconnection and efficiency in the digital era, and the reform in the field of industrial automation is imminent. The question is, how to eliminate this barrier that lies in front of the industrial automation industry and restricts the future development of the industry?
Reusable, portable, reconfigurable and interoperable open automation system came into being.
Foundation of open automation — IEC 61499 standard
Before we talk about open automation, we might as well talk about its foundation and support – IEC 61499 standard.
As we know, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) issued IEC 61131-3 in 1993, which has gradually been widely recognized and accepted by the global industry. It has become an international standard for industrial control automation programming languages such as PLC, DCS and robot control, and has played an important role in promoting the development of the whole industrial control software technology.
However, due to the early development, IEC 61131-3 does not support reconfiguration and distributed control in concept. Its limitations are that the software model only supports single device programming, lacks the concept of system, does not meet the software requirements of distributed structure, does not support the rapid response of concurrent and random events, and the equipment of different manufacturers are incompatible with each other.
IEC 61131-3 is obviously out of control when dealing with the higher-level requirements of today’s complex industrial systems.
Therefore, on the basis of IEC 61131-3, IEC launched the development of IEC 61499 standard, and published four parts of the standard for many years, including part 1: structure of IEC 61499-1, which summarizes the design and modeling rules of distributed system based on function block; Part 2 IEC 61499-2: requirements for software tools; Part 4: IEC 61499-4: Rules for consistency rules. Part 3 IEC 61499-3 was withdrawn in 2007 due to technical obsolescence. Therefore, the current version of IEC 61499 standard consists of three parts. It is reported that IEC 61499-5, mainly as a system level modeling specification, is being prepared.
Based on the block diagram familiar to engineers, IEC 61499 extends the function block from the subroutine structure in IEC 61131-3 to the functional unit in distributed computing system. It is usually used as system level executable modeling language. Its core is the event triggered function block network. The function block provides a unified interface package for logic code, and the function blocks are connected with each other through event and data interfaces.
As a high-level system design language for defining distributed information and control systems, IEC 61499 has the following main features:
4.The control algorithm is modeled graphically by connecting function blocks;
5.Directly support the real-time communication of distributed system;
6.The equipment of different suppliers can be interoperable;
7.Automatically manage low-level changeable binding between resources;
8.Reconfiguration is supported.
The original intention of IEC 61499 standard is to make the function block standard a general standard, which can be used as the basis of various standards in the field of industrial process measurement and control. Based on its general characteristics, IEC 61499 is defined as “application domain neutral”, that is, it does not contain any special characteristics of a specific domain. Other standards can be established using the concept of IEC 61499 and add special extensions to their own fields.
Open automation system based on IEC61499
Since its first release in 2005, IEC 61499 standard has experienced the whole process from rise, silence to maturity. During this period, many industry experts and institutions have done fruitful research and Practice on the application of the standard, and developed many open automation platforms and systems.
These include Neptune modular craftsman (FBB), the first IEC 61499 integrated development environment based entirely on Browser / server architecture, and distributed industrial automation and control framework (4diac), the world’s first open source design tool and operation platform of IEC 61499 standard.
As one of the manufacturers actively embracing open automation, Schneider Electric combined its own profound automation technology and industrial field experience to promote this change, and launched a new generation of ecostruxure automation expert.
Ecostruxure open automation platform is also based on IEC 61499 standard. It integrates Schneider Electric’s years of accumulation and innovation achievements in IEC 61499 and automation technology. It is the most mature overall solution for open automation commercialization at present. At present, ecostruxure open automation platform has been upgraded to v21.2, which can support more industrial scenarios.
As a software centric automation system, ecostruxure open automation platform seamlessly integrates it and ot capabilities, prolongs the system life and can be upgraded continuously. “At present, it is difficult for automation applications to run across platforms among ‘universal equipment’. Many enterprises realize that the next generation of industrial automation must be interoperable and must get rid of the existing proprietary system mode. Ecostruxure open automation platform realizes the decoupling of automation software and hardware, helps enterprises untie and release their production potential, and truly faces the future Pang Xingjian, senior vice president of Schneider Electric, said that ecostruxure open automation platform reconstructs automation through three key ways.
First, the separation of automation applications from hardware will bring unprecedented flexibility. Combining this revolutionary approach with event based network cross platform operation means that users can quickly adapt to changing business needs without worrying about the time and economic cost of downtime.
Second, it is easier to integrate IT applications, tools and industrial technology. This native it / OT integration enables users to seamlessly integrate new technologies into the control system architecture without heavy engineering work or the introduction of highly coupled and non cohesive system design technology.
Third, the ecostruxure open automation platform natively supports an asset centric design approach. Applications are created based on ready-made asset models, eliminating low-value repetitive tasks, and easily encapsulating and reusing portable automation objects, thus greatly improving engineering efficiency. This frees engineers to focus on high-value engineering applications and innovation.
“One of the biggest advantages of open automation is that it can let technicians get rid of simple repetitive unnecessary labor and condense their real innovation and insight into the industry into knowledge that can be passed on,” said Pang Xingjian, “In the future, we also hope to build an open automation market, so that more technicians, R & D personnel and enterprises can transform their insight and understanding of the industry into open automation functions, and make greater contributions to the overall progress of the industry by means of enterprise micro services or industrial edge app.” Ecostruxure open automation platform has shown extraordinary value in practical applications in many industries.
Work together to build an open automation ecosystem
Any open system is inseparable from the ecosystem. Just like the mobile Android system in the field of consumer electronics, with its strong ecosystem, it leads the development of the mobile Internet era. Similarly, as a new field, the development and expansion of open automation is inseparable from the cooperation of partners and the construction and expansion of ecosystem.
Pang Xingjian pointed out that in the digital age, no enterprise can face all the challenges alone. For a new thing, someone needs to vigorously appeal and promote it. Schneider Electric is both a beneficiary and an enabler of open automation technology. Schneider Electric is willing to work with partners to cooperate with each other in a healthy and open ecosystem to promote the development and popularization of open automation technology.
In fact, in order to promote the opening of industrial automation system, make full use of international advanced standards and technologies and build a good application ecology, Schneider Electric has done a lot of work and is committed to closely combining system integrators, equipment manufacturers, software developers and end users to form a truly open ecology.
For example, in order to attract more developers to join the development automation, Schneider Electric is jointly undertaking the edge control competition with Intel. Through the ecostruxure open automation platform + Intel’s computing power, Schneider Electric is widely soliciting works from universities, scientific research institutions, enterprises and institutions, start-up teams and individual developers.
In addition, Schneider Electric recently signed a cooperation framework agreement with the Institute of comprehensive technology and economy of instruments and meters in the machinery industry (the Institute), which is committed to technology promotion and standardization cooperation in the fields of intelligent manufacturing and industrial Internet, and jointly establish an open automation joint R & D laboratory. The joint R & D laboratory will focus on the application of IEC 61499 standard, technical training, test and verification, industry promotion and ecological construction.
At the same time, the two sides also jointly issued the white paper on open automation, which systematically described the basic characteristics and related technologies of open automation, introduced the main technical contents of IEC 61499 series international standards and their value to the composition of open automation, and shared the application practice of open automation in process and discrete industries, It also puts forward some suggestions on the application, promotion and future development of open automation industry.
It can be said that the popularization of open automation technology will completely change the form of industrial control system. With the deepening of industrial digital transformation, it is time to promote open automation. Of course, there are still a series of challenges to be faced in the future of open automation, such as how to integrate and manage a new generation of control systems, further improvement of standards, etc., but the wind has come and the tide has risen. In the face of this unstoppable opportunity for major change, when will we not embrace it at this time?
Post time: Nov-24-2021