Methodology and Tools to Integrate Industry 4.0 CPS into Process Design and Management: ISA-88 Use Case

Abstract

Once an industrial process is designed, the real implementation of the process control is programmed into Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) devices on the shop floor. These devices are programmed with their low-level coding languages. This presents several drawbacks, such as inconsistencies and naming errors between the design and the implementation steps, or difficulties in integrating new Industry 4.0 functionalities. This paper presents a design and management methodology, and a software architecture to overcome these drawbacks. The objective of the methodology is the interconnectivity of domain knowledge, software, and hardware components to automatically generate Industry 4.0 Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) for industrial processes. The methodology is composed of five main steps: designing the process, programming the PLC, capturing data, managing the process and visualizing it. Based on the methodology and the architecture, a set of tools targeting ISA-88 processes has been implemented and validated. IEC-61512 (also known as ANSI/ISA-88) is a standard addressing batch process control. It follows a design philosophy for describing equipment and procedures, equally applicable to manual processes. The methodology has been validated on a process controlled by a Siemens 1200 PLC. The main advantages of this methodology identified during the validation are: (i) reduction in the time required to design the ISA-88 process, (ii) reduction in the PLC programming time and associated errors, (iii) automatic integration of a CPS with data capture and visualization functionalities, and (iv) remote management of the process.