Boosting Extra-functional Code Reusability in Cyber-physical Production Systems: The Error Handling Case Study

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenge of reusing extra-functional software, like error handling, in cyber-physical production systems by proposing object-oriented extension concepts to improve flexibility and reusability.

Contribution

It introduces procedural and object-oriented concepts for error handling in CPPS, demonstrating the advantages of object-oriented IEC 61131-3 extensions for software reuse.

Findings

Object-oriented extension of IEC 61131-3 enhances reusability.

Procedural and object-oriented approaches are compared.

Object-oriented approach shows higher potential for planned reuse.

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) are long-living and mechatronic systems, which include mechanics, electrics/electronics and software. The interdisciplinary nature combined with challenges and trends in the context of Industry 4.0 such as a high degree of customization, small lot sizes and evolution cause a high amount of variability. Mastering the variability of functional control software, e.g., different control variants of an actuator type, is itself a challenge in developing and reusing CPPS software. This task becomes even more complex when considering extra-functional software such as operating modes, diagnosis and error handling. These software parts have high interdependencies with functional software, often involving the human-machine interface (HMI) to enable the intervention of operators. This paper illustrates the challenges in documenting the dependencies of these software parts including their variability using family models. A procedural and an object-oriented concept for implementing error handling, which represents an extra-functional task with high dependencies to functional software and the HMI, are proposed. The suitability of both concepts to increase the software's reusability and, thus, its flexibility in the context of Industry 4.0 is discussed. Their comparison confirms the high potential of the object-oriented extension of IEC 61131-3 to handle planned reuse of extra-functional CPPS software successfully.