Current industrial applications demand the design of more and more complex, safe and trustworthy control systems exhibiting a high degree of flexibility and reutilization. To achieve this, the engineering process should be improved by making the engineering tools involved in the development process to collaborate during the design. This paper presents a model-based approach for designing complex automation applications. The core of the approach is constituted by a set of domain specific models that depend on the application field and whose elements, syntax and semantics are defined from the point of view of the experts that participate in the design of the system. The domain models are defined using engineering tools as the design progresses and they can be used to achieve tool integration through model collaboration. This can be achieved following the Model Driven Engineering approach by means of model transformations. This paper specifically focuses on the first step of this paradigm: the definition of domain languages, in this case for industrial control systems, as well as validation mechanisms of application designs coming from different domain tools. Three well known and widely used industrial standards have been used: Computer Aided Engineering eXchange (CAEX), PLCopen (a representation format for the IEC 61131-3 standard) and MathML (a language for defining mathematical constraints). Using model checking it is possible to assure the correctness of the control system specification and using model transformation it is possible to detect design errors in early stages of the design.

New demands, coming from the industry 4.0 concept of the near future production systems have to be fulfilled in the coming years. Seamless integration of current technologies with new ones is mandatory. The concept of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) is the core of the new control and automation distributed systems. However, it is necessary to provide the global production system with integrated architectures that make it possible. This work analyses the requirements and proposes a model-based architecture and technologies to make the concept a reality.

The growing complexity of industrial automation demands the adoption of software engineering principles for improving the development process of control systems. This paper presents a methodological approach to the design and development of complex automation systems relying on model-driven engineering (MDE). A benefit of this approach is the integration of methods and techniques widespread within the automation discipline with modern MDE techniques guiding the designer through the development phases. A second advantage is to add flexibility enough to adapt the steps to the needs of the system under design. Finally, the architecture presented is prepared to be adapted to methodology extensions to cover other aspects of automation systems. The framework is based on domain models that are defined through the development phases using the terminology of the automation field. Using model transformations both documentation about system analysis and design and the skeleton of software units are automatically generated. A proof-of-concept tool has been developed that has been tested on the design of medium-complexity projects to assess the impact of its use with respect to project documentation and maintenance.

The XML interface defined by PLCopen allows software reuse through interoperability between development tools, as it provides the ability to transfer the information that is on the screen to other platforms. This article presented a way to give any development environment that does not yet support the PLCopen interface the ability to import/export XML files following such a format and, thus, making code really exchangeable. However, the profit to be made may be much more than code reuse, as the interface can be used to interoperate with other software tools, such as configuration, documentation, version control, modeling, and simulation tools.