Utilizing LLMs for Industrial Process Automation

TL;DR

This paper explores the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in industrial process automation, focusing on specialized proprietary languages to enhance programming tasks and development efficiency in manufacturing systems.

Contribution

It introduces methods for applying LLMs to industrial programming tasks, addressing a gap in research on their use with proprietary languages.

Findings

LLMs can generate code for robotic movement routines

Applying LLMs accelerates industrial software development

Effective integration of LLMs improves manufacturing process automation

Abstract

A growing number of publications address the best practices to use Large Language Models (LLMs) for software engineering in recent years. However, most of this work focuses on widely-used general purpose programming languages like Python due to their widespread usage training data. The utility of LLMs for software within the industrial process automation domain, with highly-specialized languages that are typically only used in proprietary contexts, remains underexplored. This research aims to utilize and integrate LLMs in the industrial development process, solving real-life programming tasks (e.g., generating a movement routine for a robotic arm) and accelerating the development cycles of manufacturing systems.