Operation-oriented specification for integrated control logic development

In order to develop a manufacturing automation system, it is necessary to understand the manufacturing operations and their relationship, the sequence of operations, which is the basis for control logic design. The operations have preconditions that define when they are allowed to start executing, which also defines the sequence relations among them. Requirements and demands throughout the development will add and change these conditions, which also changes the sequence of operations. This paper studies how an operation-oriented development approach better can handle the operations and manufacturing sequences from early product design to detailed control engineering. An operation is defined by an extended finite automaton, with an initial, executes and finished location. The start event is enabled by a precondition, the stop event is enabled by a postcondition and the reset event is enabled by a reset condition. This representation together with a resource and product description enables the possibility to integrate control logic in the complete development process.