Industrial IDE Integration and Validation for Automation Projects
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Solution Overview
Problem
Industrial automation systems face challenges in designing, programming, and configuring multiple aspects of automation systems using separate development environments, leading to a piecemeal design approach that requires significant testing and debugging to ensure proper integration.
Innovation Solution
An integrated development environment (IDE) is provided that uses a common design environment and data model to design, program, and configure industrial automation systems, supporting features across the automation lifecycle, including design, installation, operation, and maintenance, with a testing framework and validation checklists to ensure system integrity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If separate development environments are used for designing, programming, and configuring industrial automation systems, then each aspect can be developed independently, but the integration requires significant testing and debugging to ensure proper integration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple separate development environments (design, programming, configuration) into a single integrated development environment (IDE) that provides unified access to all development activities. This merging eliminates the integration problems caused by separate tools while maintaining the ability to work with multiple system aspects simultaneously, thereby improving both ease of manufacture and reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The IDE is designed as a universal platform that performs multiple functions including design, programming, configuration, and validation of industrial automation systems. This multi-functional approach allows users to work with different system aspects through a common interface, reducing integration issues while preserving independent development capabilities.
2Reliability
If an integrated development environment is used to unify design, programming, and configuration, then integration issues are reduced, but the complexity of the development platform increases
Solution Approach 1:
The IDE is organized into distinct functional modules or workspaces for design, programming, configuration, and validation activities. Each module handles specific tasks independently but communicates through a common data model, reducing overall complexity while maintaining integration benefits.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a common data model or intermediate representation layer that mediates between different development activities (design, programming, configuration). This intermediary structure allows the IDE to manage complexity by providing a standardized interface that connects various functions without requiring direct integration between all components.
3Reliability
If comprehensive validation is performed across all aspects of the project, then proper integration is ensured, but development time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The IDE performs validation checks automatically during the development process rather than requiring separate comprehensive testing phases. By conducting preliminary validation of integration aspects as developers work, the system ensures reliability without adding significant development time, as issues are caught early in the natural development flow.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides continuous feedback about integration status and validation results throughout the development process. This real-time feedback mechanism allows developers to maintain reliability without extensive final testing, as problems are identified and corrected during development rather than requiring time-consuming post-development validation.
Data Source
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AI summary
An industrial integrated development environment (IDE) supports commissioning features that facilitate intelligent deployment of an automation system project (100) to appropriate industrial devices (e.g., industrial controllers, drives, HMI terminals, etc.). In some embodiments, the industrial IDE system can generate validation checklists that can be used during commissioning to validate the system and manage project validation sign-off procedures. After commissioning of the system, the IDE system can also support a number of runtime monitoring features, including monitoring the automation system during operation and providing assistance with regard to detecting, predicting, and correcting maintenance issues.