Automatic backwards compatibility of automated material flow softwaren

In order to flexibly adapt the control software of automated material flow
systems to changes, an approach for a modular and backwards compatible
control software is presented. In this way, higher-version software modules are
able to imitate the interfaces and behavior of older modules. Thus, the exchange
of automated material flow modules can be improved and the engineering effort
and error-proneness can be reduced. The approach is based on a developed
modeling language for the formalized description of the control software. Due to
a model-based approach to analyzing the interface and behavior of automated
material flow modules automatically, differences between two software versions
can be identified and classified. In order to adapt the differences, (pre)defined
wrappers are applied automatically. To improve the usability of the approach, a
layout-oriented editor enabling the development of the control software based on
the assembly of icons representing the electrical/mechanical components, e.g. a
roller conveyor, from top view on the automated material flow systems was
introduced. The evaluations show the application of the approaches in a real industrial
automated material flow system. Based on this application, the modeling
of backwards compatible material flow modules and the corresponding generation
to IEC 61131-3 compliant code is demonstrated. In order to evaluate the industrial
applicability of the approaches, several feasibility studies as well as workshops
and a paper survey of different experts in the field of material flow systems were
conducted.