Zero-Downtime Reconfiguration of Distributed Control Logic in Industrial Automation and Control

Future manufacturing is envisioned to be highly flexible and adaptable. New technologies for efficient engineering of reconfigurable systems and their adaptations are preconditions for this vision. Without such solutions, engineering adaptations of Industrial Process Measurement and Control Systems (IPMCS) will exceed the costs of engineered systems by far and the reuse of equipment will become inefficient. Especially the reconfiguration of control applications is not sufficiently solved by state-of-the-art technology. This chapter gives an overview of the use of reconfiguration applications for zero-downtime system reconfiguration of control applications on basis of the standard IEC 61499 which provides a reference model for distributed and reconfigurable control systems. A new approach for the reconfiguration of IEC 61499 based control application and the corresponding modeling is discussed. This new method significantly increases engineering efficiency and reuse in component-based IPMCS.