Educational approaches for the industrial acceptance of IEC 61499

Professionals' assessments on the usefulness of IEC 61499 depend on several factors that are outside of the scope of the standard. Automation design in the industry is largely routine work that is based on copying and modifying existing domain-specific solutions, so the lack of legacy software exacerbates learning difficulties. Other factors such as team organization and the development environment also strongly affect the experience of using IEC 61499. The goal of this paper is to identify how a designer's framework needs to change before IEC 61499 can be applied successfully. Two differently organized IEC 61499 courses for professionals and researchers are described, and the impact of the educational approach on a positive experience for professionals is discussed.