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The goal of modern engineering approaches is to increase the productivity of the engineering activities by supporting of the engineering process in three points:
- Automation of task sequences during the engineering process
- Integration and transferability of engineering data
- Reuse of engineering solutions (automation planning projects or parts of them)
New approaches for the development of Automation Systems have to consider the fact that the automation system itself hardly can be changed. Alternative solutions have to support existing system architectures and legacy systems to a large extend. To solve this problem, automation software companies developed modern approaches for the engineering of automation systems based on component-based ideas.
Starting point of modern engineering approaches are the different engineering views on a plant. For the integration of the engineering data, similarities between the different views can be identified: the link between all individual views on the plant is the real existing device within the plant with its various aspects for the automation of the plant. All participating engineers view their respective aspects of the device. Some aspects concern the device itself like mechanical / electrical characteristics, electrical / process connections and control software. Other aspects concern the actual position and tasks of the device within the automation system like device configuration, wiring diagrams and operating graphs.
The basic idea of the approach is to combine all different views in a single entity and thus to modularize the engineering data analogous to the real entities in the plant. The entities are called “technological components” They represent a kind of data container, where the several engineering aspects are integrated and associated. Based on this component approach for the integration of engineering data the different views, their interrelations and the engineering processes as well as workflow can be supported.
The technological components are the starting point for a higher-level engineering view on the plant’s automation system. They represent a hierarchical structuring of the plant from an abstract technological perspective (e.g. mechanical assembly, location). Technological components represent mechanical or process elements (valve, pump), electronic elements (switch, contactor, sensors), automation hardware (PLC, I/O-card) or even automation software.
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