Method for generating meta-model driven dynamic user interface
By automatically generating user interfaces using a model-driven approach, the high cost of UI configuration in existing technologies is solved, enabling flexible and rapid UI generation that adapts to changing manufacturing environment requirements and reduces development costs and time.
Patent Information
- Application Number
- CN202480057705.9
- Authority / Receiving Office
- CN · China
- Patent Type
- Applications(China)
- Current Assignee / Owner
- Priority Date
- 2023-09-11
- Filing Date
- 2024-06-04
- Publication Date
- 2026-04-14
AI Technical Summary
In existing technologies, the creation and configuration of user interfaces (UIs) are typically manual tasks, resulting in high costs and time overhead, especially in manufacturing environments with multiple business domains. Frequent adjustments are required with each version update or change in requirements, impacting customer responsiveness and satisfaction.
A model-driven approach is adopted to automatically generate the user interface on the client side by generating a meta dataset and a dynamic rendering engine. By leveraging the business domain model and enhanced UI-related information, combined with the dynamic rendering engine and web framework on the browser, the UI can be configured and generated in real time.
It reduces the need for intermediate design stages, improves UI generation efficiency, lowers development costs, and enables flexible UI configuration and rapid response to adapt to changing manufacturing environment requirements.
Smart Images
Figure CN121866539A_ABST
Abstract
Description
[0001] The present invention relates to a method for generating a user interface in at least one MOM system, the at least one MOM system controlling a manufacturing environment for various manufacturing resources existing in multiple business domains.
[0002] In the fields of process automation and process monitoring, standard automation systems for controlling the widest range of conceivable production resources, machines, and plants (MOM objects) represent advanced technology. Such technology specifically encompasses the extensive product range offered by Siemens under the OpCenter® product family in the field of manufacturing operations management (MOM). A large product line for addressing the technical tasks in question, such as counting, measurement, positioning, motion control, closed-loop control, and cam control, enhances the performance capabilities of appropriate process controllers. Various configurations enable the realization of flexible machine concepts.
[0003] In this context, a wide range of IT solutions exist that connect the physical hardware, which is close to the technical and / or logical processes, to the application layer of the client-side drive. Therefore, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) have been developed to meet all the requirements of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for seamless integration into Fully Integrated Automation (TIA). The plug-and-play architecture, where individual functions can be configured and easily combined with each other, forms the basis of this success, simplifying the complex structures controlling manufacturing plants, etc.
[0004] Therefore, manufacturing companies face various challenges, especially with increasing variability across multiple dimensions. These dimensions include product characteristics, production volume, production processes, manufacturing technologies, customer behavior, supplier strategies, and IT-driven challenges (cloud, SaaS), and even the transformation process across the entire industrial sector. This trend is accelerating, directly impacting the value chain and its associated physical supply chains, as well as factory design and management.
[0005] The prevailing view is that to meet these challenges and continue to remain competitive, companies need to embrace the digitization of all processes, not just production lines, but the entire value chain—from customer orders to product delivery—through seamless information flow. The impact of digitization on industrial processes is so significant that it is considered not merely progress, but a revolutionary step in industrial history. A specific term has been introduced to denote it: Industry 4.0. The vision of Industry 4.0 is to transform traditional factories into smart factories, where processes are managed by software applications that seamlessly link business, production, logistics, and R&D within a holistic system. Siemens® is responding to this trend by envisioning the autonomous factory concept, which focuses on highly flexible, resilient, sustainable, and self-organizing production for the future.
[0006] Of course, data is the foundation of this revolution. Data must be processed, exchanged, imported, displayed, and aggregated to enable manufacturing to operate successfully.
[0007] A major challenge in managing data in complex scenarios is that all data must be processed in the same way by the participants, even though they are often encoded in different formats. These data format differences are a significant obstacle to seamless application integration and increase the deployment costs of complex systems.
[0008] Furthermore, for software vendors, coordinating the data models of their applications is difficult, and sometimes it is also difficult to coordinate the data models between different versions of the same software. This is a significant problem that hinders innovation and increases development and maintenance costs.
[0009] Semantic technologies can provide solutions to alleviate problems and reduce costs. They associate semantic meaning with data structures in a way that both humans and machines can understand. For humans—whether users, developers, system integrators, or data analysts—this feature helps them understand information and improve productivity; for machines, it enables them to process data with the same semantic meaning but in different formats.
[0010] Nevertheless, the burden of providing and receiving data in a favorable and self-explanatory manner at the system's user interface remains. The creation, configuration, or updating of the UI is often manual work, but it must be done frequently. For example, customers often want to configure the UI to suit their specific work environment to ensure high productivity. This customization work is typically handled by the IT team and software developers providing the system. Due to the communication needs between users and developers, and the specialized skills required to develop the UI, even small changes can incur significant time and cost overhead. This overhead slows down customer responsiveness to emerging needs and can lead to customer dissatisfaction. Furthermore, each new version may release new UI changes, which each customer must integrate into their environment.
[0011] Therefore, the development team currently has a separate UI team to create the UI to represent / manipulate the data. Clients hire in-house developers or external contractors to configure the UI based on their changes to the model and the changes brought by new versions, which is costly and labor-intensive.
[0012] Therefore, the object of this invention is to define a method that provides a simple and effective way to create and / or customize user interfaces on the client side, and in particular, the option to do this on the fly during production runtime would be highly desirable.
[0013] This objective is achieved according to the present invention by a method for generating a user interface in at least one MOM system, said at least one MOM system controlling a manufacturing environment for various manufacturing resources existing in multiple business domains, the method comprising the following steps:
[0014] a) Provide a business domain model for each business domain, which includes, among other information, all relevant information about resources and objects and their attributes in the specific business domain, the attributes of which potentially are the themes of UI tags;
[0015] b) Generate a meta dataset from all business domain models, the meta dataset including information about resources and objects and their related attributes;
[0016] c) Enhance the meta dataset to include additional UI-related information about how these business domain models should be presented;
[0017] d) The dynamic rendering engine, which executes on the client side (browser), utilizes a rich metadata dataset about the business domain model, including UI-related information.
[0018] e) Based on the available metadata dataset, select information to be displayed in the user interface via an interface provided by the web framework, which provides the metadata dataset to the user in an optional manner; and
[0019] f) The dynamic rendering engine uses the selected information to generate a user interface that displays the selected information based on the rendering data in the metadata set and the enhanced UI-related information.
[0020] Therefore, this method eliminates the need for an intermediate design phase that requires a running application to design or develop the UI pages. Using this invention, client users can design and configure the UI along with the rest of the business domain model in a single phase, without needing a running software development system. The business domain model and the corresponding UI are developed / deployed / released together in a single step.
[0021] In a preferred embodiment of the invention, UI-related information may include information about one or more of the following:
[0022] i) Grouping of attributes,
[0023] ii) Layout of attributes and / or corresponding UI tags,
[0024] iii) The location of attributes and / or UI tags,
[0025] iv) Size of attributes and / or UI tags,
[0026] v) Element options related to attributes and / or UI tags.
[0027] Along with metadata, this UI-related information already exists when the user begins designing his / her user interface.
[0028] To enable easy access to the UI creation environment, it can be helpful when the dynamic rendering engine, which runs in the manufacturing environment on the client side, is provided in the form of a browser.
[0029] To support the automatic generation of user interfaces, the underlying web framework can be built using a library format that allows users to browse content based on selectable information.
[0030] Further support during the user interface generation process can be provided in the form of support for selecting desired items to be displayed in the user interface. Therefore, a web framework can be designed to allow users to select desired items from selectable information via drag-and-drop operations.
[0031] Preferred embodiments are described in more detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
[0032] Figure 1 This schematically illustrates a conceptual view of a modular MOM dynamic UI framework in a runtime environment;
[0033] Figure 2 Schematic illustration of the work by Figure 1 The image shows a first-concept example of a UI created by a dynamic rendering engine.
[0034] Figure 3 Schematic illustration of the work by Figure 1 The second conceptual example of a UI created by the dynamic rendering engine shown;
[0035] Figure 4 Schematic illustration of the work by Figure 1 The third-concept example of a UI created by the dynamic rendering engine shown;
[0036] Figure 5 Schematic illustration of the work by Figure 1 The fourth concept example of a UI created by the dynamic rendering engine shown;
[0037] Figure 6 The diagram illustrates and illustratively demonstrates the methods used to generate Figure 2 Metadata configuration of a first conceptual example of the user interface shown;
[0038] Figure 7 The diagram illustrates and illustratively demonstrates the methods used to generate Figure 3 Metadata configuration of the second conceptual example of the user interface shown;
[0039] Figure 8 The diagram illustrates and illustratively demonstrates the methods used to generate Figure 4 Metadata configuration of the third concept example of the user interface shown; and
[0040] Figure 9 The diagram illustrates and illustratively demonstrates the methods used to generate Figure 5 The metadata configuration of the fourth concept example of the user interface shown.
[0041] This invention is part of a MES / MOM solution, such as the one offered by Siemens® AG under the trademark Opcenter®, and is designed to deliver greater value to multi-plant solutions by enhancing the ability to automatically generate user interfaces without any native programming. Therefore, data operability across different applications and systems / tools / resources in a manufacturing entity can be significantly improved.
[0042] Specifically, this invention provides a concept for the dynamic generation of user interfaces. This dynamic UI generation is based on a model-driven approach, where the core business solution is built around a business domain model. This business domain model includes, among other information, all relevant information about resources and objects within a specific business domain and their attributes; the attributes of resources and objects can serve as themes for potential UI tags. The collection of all business domain models is hereinafter referred to as metadata. According to this invention, this metadata is enhanced to include additional UI-related information about how these business domain models should be presented, such as attribute grouping, layout, position, size, element options, etc.
[0043] This metadata about the business domain model—including enrichment using UI-related information—is utilized by a dynamic rendering engine that executes on the client side (browser). This engine generates corresponding elements / artifacts in the user interface on demand, based on a predefined web framework. The results from the dynamic rendering engine are then presented to the user.
[0044] In this context, the web framework is a configuration-first framework that enables users to rapidly develop web applications by writing, testing, maintaining, and downloading them at runtime with significantly less code. It typically follows top trends in front-end development, such as component-oriented design, declarative coding, integrated state management, SPAs, and client-side routing, and it allows for the use of JavaScript code extensions to manage application complexity. Therefore, the web framework presented here provides a complete framework for implementing end-to-end solutions for front-end applications tailored to user needs. The declarative UI approach offers the possibility of developing user interfaces in a technology-agnostic way without relying on any JavaScript framework. In this solution, a rich set of ready-made UI elements is provided, which can be used to build web applications consistent with today's common user experiences.
[0045] This high-level process / design of the method is in Figure 1 As shown in the image.
[0046] In the following sections, some examples are presented to illustrate how metadata can be used to generate dynamic UI artifacts in a so-generated user interface.
[0047] Figure 2 Examples and Figure 6 The corresponding encoding in the code indicates the object's type and fields in the user interface, as well as some properties among the object's attributes shown in the user interface. This information is used to determine the UI controls used. Furthermore, additional metadata attributes should be used to generate the UI elements accordingly. In this example:
[0048] i) A UI fragment represents a modifiable object that drives the use of a specific UI element representing that type of object.
[0049] ii) The listed tabs are driven by UI-related metadata associated with the metadata object definition.
[0050] iii) The Description field contains a string value that sets a set of multi-line configuration options, and therefore uses a multi-line text (TEXT) control.
[0051] iv) The Note field also contains string type values, but its fields are marked as read-only or write-protected; therefore, the text controls on the UI are also write-protected.
[0052] Figure 3 Examples and Figure 7 The corresponding coding in the example describes the generation of an "Auto-Select List Control" based on field-based metadata configuration. A field factory represents a named object, and the field is configured to provide a list of values to the selection list. The example also demonstrates a multi-column layout strategy based on configurations for regular groups.
[0053] More complex UI elements, such as lists and grids ( Figure 4 and Figure 8 The corresponding encoding and Figure 5 and Figure 9 The corresponding encoding in the metadata is also dynamically generated. Lists should represent lists of simple values or lists of objects with simple relationships. Grids are helpful when depicting lists of objects with composite relationships. The following diagrams illustrate several examples of UI elements representing lists and grids, which are crucial for generating corresponding UI elements based solely on object and field metadata configurations.
[0054] Figures 2 to 5 All of these user interfaces are dynamically rendered at runtime, without requiring UI page design and based solely on metadata configuration. Figures 6 to 9 The metadata configuration used to generate the aforementioned user interface is shown.
[0055] Therefore, bridging the gap between how development teams create the UI and how customers configure it will improve efficiency. Customers will use UI-related information to extend their models, thus obtaining the UI they want without large service items. This gives customers the ability to extend their models in an agile and cost-effective manner.
[0056] In a client-side runtime environment, the performance of UI rendered on a browser is the same as that of currently provided hard-coded UI. This invention provides a design-time UI creation method that differs significantly from the provision of hard-coded UI. This method is design-time, where the user pre-configures pages or components by dragging and dropping model elements into a concept called a "virtual page," provided, for example, by a web framework. The UI application reads the content of this virtual page and renders the final UI to the user.
[0057] In practice, existing technologies follow a two-phase approach for UI creation and deployment:
[0058] i) Create, configure & deploy models -> run application services for customized models; and
[0059] ii) Create, configure & deploy UI pages -> The UI pages are now available to end users.
[0060] This invention eliminates the need for an intermediate design phase that requires a running application to design or develop UI pages. Using this invention, client users can design and configure the UI along with the rest of the model in a single phase, without needing a running system. The model and the corresponding UI are developed / deployed / released together in a single step.
Claims
1. A method for generating a user interface (MMOM UI) in at least one MOM system, said at least one MOM system controlling a manufacturing environment for various manufacturing resources existing in multiple business domains, the method comprising the following steps: a) Provide a business domain model for each business domain, which includes, among other information, all relevant information about resources and objects and their attributes in the specific business domain, the attributes of which potentially are the themes of UI tags (multiple UI tags); b) Generate a metadata set (MOM metadata) from all business domain models, the metadata set including information related to the resources and objects and their associated attributes; c) Enhance the meta dataset to include additional UI-related information about how these business domain models should be presented; d) The dynamic rendering engine, executed in the manufacturing environment on the client side, utilizes the rich metadata about the business domain model, including UI-related information. e) Based on the available metadata dataset, select the information to be displayed in the user interface (MMOM UI) via an interface provided by the web framework (SWF), which provides the metadata dataset to the user in an optional manner; as well as f) The dynamic rendering engine uses the selected information to generate a user interface (MOM UI) that displays the selected information based on the rendering data in the metadata set and the enhanced UI-related information.
2. The method according to claim 1, wherein, The UI-related information includes information about one or more of the following: i) Grouping of attributes, ii) Layout of attributes and / or corresponding UI tags, iii) The location of attributes and / or UI tags, iv) Size of attributes and / or UI tags, v) Element options related to the attribute and / or the UI tag.
3. The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein, The dynamic rendering engine, which runs in the manufacturing environment on the client side, is provided in the form of a browser.
4. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein, Web frameworks (SWF) are library formats that enable users to browse content based on selectable information.
5. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein, Web frameworks (SWF) are designed to allow users to select desired items from selectable information through drag-and-drop operations.