Systematic interdisciplinary reuse within the engineering of automated plants

Abstract

The engineering of automated plants is a process in which a multitude of different disciplines is involved. These disciplines vary by the type of plant, but do mostly work in a sequential way. Therefore the work of each discipline is based on the results of the previous discipline. As a consequence, an optimization of the engineering is mostly done by a single discipline, not taking the work of the previous or subsequent disciplines into account. When engineering a complex system, like an automated plant, this approach is not sufficient. Within this paper, a methodology for the engineering of automated plants is presented, which is focused on the application of interdisciplinary reusable components. Therefore interdisciplinary and configurable reusable components are developed in a project-independent part and applied within a project-dependent part, where the plant is engineered according to the customer requirements. This methodology is based in common reuse-approaches and includes approaches of different domains, such as the software or process engineering. The presented methodology has been validated by the engineering data of a desalination plant.