Towards an Object-Oriented extension for IEC 61131

The IEC 61131 has been successfully used for many years in the industrial automation domain. IEC 61499 was defined to better handle complexity and increase modularity and reusability in the development process, but it failed on its objective. The extension of the IEC 61131 that supports the Object Oriented paradigm is considered today as the most promising solution to address new requirements and lead to a more productive development process. In this paper, the upcoming version of the IEC 61131 and mainly its extension to the OO paradigm is analyzed with the intention to identify defects and propose solutions. The approach adopted in this extension is quite similar to the one of C++, i.e., a mixing of procedural and OO paradigms. This has advantages and dis-advantages for the developer.