Analyzing Dependencies in an Industrial Automation Engineering System

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to compute and visualize dependencies between elements of an industrial automation system. The various system elements are represented by a network of vertices and edges in a graph, which in turn is used for computing dependencies, assessing the impact of a change and providing a mechanism for visualizing relationships between the individual elements. The final goal of this effort is to improve the engineering efficiency by providing a system that computes and visualizes the engineering project data dependencies and provides the user with a visually-driven rapid-search and navigation mechanism.