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PLCopen Newsletter - Issue September 2022
- PLCopen new working group on software quality
- PLCopen Guidelines for Object Orientation – Application Example for Motion Control, version 0.99 Release for Comments
- PLCopen YouTube channel – new video available on an Industry 4.0 example
- PLCopen Conformity Level ST Certification for AXEL srl
- PLCopen welcomes new member
- PLCopen joins partner program of PACK EXPO International in the USA
- Meet us at the SPS 2022 in Germany
- PLCopen supports JAI 2022 in Spain
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1. New PLCopen working group on software quality
PLCopen starts a new working group on software quality. Today platform suppliers offer comprehensive tool support to measure code quality, but it is barely used by customers in daily practice. Therefore, PLCopen wants to provide guidelines to support customers of PLCopen members to optimally integrate existing metrics for code quality into the software engineering workflow to achieve the greatest possible benefit with little effort.
The introductory meeting is set for October 13, from 13:00 till around 14:30 CEST via GoToMeeting. Further meetings, esp. a Face2Face meeting will be decided during this meeting.
Some background information:
Software plays an ever-increasing role in industrial automation. This results in a software cost increase, even to the point that it becomes the highest part of the total system. To control these costs, one needs higher efficiency during the application development, while increasing the software quality and decreasing the maintenance and update costs.
Essential to controlling the software cost is the quality of the software itself. Quality in the sense of correctness, reliability, usability, integrity, efficiency, as well as maintainability, flexibility, testability and portability, reusability, and interoperability, as shown by McCall below.
For measuring software quality and comparing this over time one needs metrics. Software metrics are a proven means in computer science to objectively assess software quality. Recently, numerous approaches have emerged in research to transfer established metrics for PLC software in automated manufacturing systems, which are partly also implemented by PLC platform suppliers to enable an automated quality assessment. However, up to now, these approaches have barely made their way into industrial development practice in machine and plant manufacturing.
Therefore, this working group aims to develop guidelines on how a metric-based quality assessment of PLC software can be integrated into the daily industrial routine for different stakeholders in the software engineering workflow in machine and plant engineering. Existing approaches from research and tool support from platform suppliers will be used and enlarged to be applicable for various use cases and company-specific boundary conditions – with little effort in daily practice and at the same time greatest possible benefit.
If you want to join, please contact Eelco van der Wal.
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2. PLCopen Guidelines for Object Orientation – Application Example for Motion Control, version 0.99 Release for Comments. Deadline for comments extended till October 15
With the PLCopen specification “Function blocks for Motion Control”, the PLCopen Task Force Motion Control provided a set of standardized Function Blocks to ease modularization and reuse of motion control software.
This new document presents an object-oriented implementation of the motion control specification, which can be combined with the set of procedural standard Function Blocks (FBs). The general design of the proposed object-oriented (OO) implementation is a single Axis Class implementing different functions as Methods instead of formerly used multiple FBs. A benefit of the proposed software design is the compatibility with procedural motion control FBs: the standard FBs can call the Axis Class internally to combine both approaches in one application. Thus, the user of the OO implementation needs not to be familiar with the detailed OO principles or language elements for using it.
As common in object-oriented programming (OOP), an interface is used to define the motion standard since it describes how a class is presented to the outside (sometimes including the behavior). More precisely, an interface is the definition of the functionalities that a class may implement. The class is the actual implementation of the defined functionalities, including vendor-specific aspects. Correspondingly, this document standardizes a motion interface. For using this standard, an axis class needs to be implemented, which follows (“implements”) this standardized motion interface. In short: the interface defines the functionalities, but not how they are implemented (their content), which is done vendor-specific in an axis class.
Utilizing three application examples, this document shows how the standardized FBs from the PLCopen motion control specification can be ported to OOP by using a standardized interface itfAxis. To apply the standard in a vendor-specific implementation, the programmer develops a class, which implements the interfaces itfAxis and, thus, has all the functions standardized in itfAxis without implementation. Then the actual, vendor-specific implementation of these functions is programmed.
The advantage of the proposed interface itfAxis is that one can decide how to program: on one hand, the standard FBs can be used, and they can internally call the itfAxis methods. On the other hand, it is possible to program in OOP by using the defined methods to start a new command, get the current status of an axis, and update or abort a command.
The details on the proposed interface and the contained methods as well as several user-defined data types are introduced in the document.
This document focuses on the motion control part of the axes only. In real projects, the axis class will have many other properties and methods for communication, hardware configuration, and additional aspects. For simplicity, these are not explained in this document.
We have now published the document “Application Examples for Motion Control – Porting Function blocks for motion control into OOP”, version 0.99 as Release for Comments. We look forward receiving your feedback and comments. The deadline has been extended till October 15, 2022. Comments can be made directly in the pdf file and sent back to PLCopen. With this feedback, PLCopen will create the official release 1.0
The document can be downloaded from the PLCopen website.
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3. PLCopen YouTube channel – new video available on an Industry 4.0 example
A new video has been posted on the PLCopen YouTube channel. This video shows an Industry 4.0 example: https://youtu.be/XRTQ4k2hCw0
Other videos on PLCopen Motion Control, Safety and on Software Structuring have been made available earlier.
We hope you will enjoy watching our videos and that they will show you on how to become more efficient in your automation.
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4. PLCopen Conformity Level ST Certification for AXEL srl
We are pleased to announce that AXEL srl was granted the Certification of a system according to PLCopen Conformity Level for ST (Structured Text) for version 5.21.0.4 of their product LogicLab.
For more information visit www.PLCopen.org.
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5. PLCopen welcomes new member
PLCopen is pleased to announce a new member:
GDR Engineering, based in Lebanon, provides industrial automation and process controls training as well as consulting services. They are now a PLCopen certified training center.
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6. PLCopen joins partner program of PACK EXPO International in the USA
PLCopen is an official partner of PACK EXPO International which takes place in Chicago from 23-26 October. We will be exhibiting and supporting our members and hope you join us and thousands of packaging and processing professionals.
We invite you to visit our booth in the Association Pavilion, booth #N-5002, next to OPC Foundation and OMAC. Registration is free with our company code 37K87.
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7. Meet us at the SPS 2022 in Germany
PLCopen will have a booth at the upcoming SPS which takes place in Nuremberg from 8-10 November. The SPS is Europe’s leading exhibition for electric automation.
Come and meet us in Hall 5, booth number 143.
For more information on the event check: https://sps.mesago.com/events/en.html.
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8. PLCopen supports JAI 2022 in Spain
PLCopen is sponsoring the 8th Congress on Technologies and Solutions for Industrial Automation (called JAI in Spain) which will take place in Vigo, Spain from 14-18 November 2022.
The conference program focuses on different aspects related to industry 4.0 and includes topics such as robotics, automation, integration of IT/OT, internet of things, industrial communication, communication protocols, security, and energy efficiency.
You will find the conference program and other information on the JAI 2022 on their website.
Eelco van der Wal, the Managing Director of PLCopen, will have a presentation on the 18th of November on how PLCopen contributes to the world of automation.
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