A Methodology for Translating Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID) Into Labeled Petri Nets for Automatic PLC Code Generation

This work proposes a novel methodology for translating industrial control systems, described in the standard ISA 5.1 (Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams P&ID) and the associated process and operation narratives, into Petri net models. In a first stage, the P&ID information and the process and operation narratives are translated into standard tables. Since narratives are given in natural language, they are a potential source of errors, for this reason a semi-automatic error removal mechanism is included. Next, the tables’ information is translated into plant and specification models, described by Labeled Petri nets (LPNs). Based on these LPNs, a LPN controller can be synthesized to drive the plant behavior according to the specification, by applying the regulation control approach introduced in the literature, resulting in PLC code for the automation of the process. The proposed approach saves time in the controller design, its commissioning, and debugging, in comparison with traditional trial-and-error approach.