Leveraging model-driven development for automation systems development

The complexity of automation systems increases steadily. Modeling is widely seen as important lever to cope with the complexity in development. Abstract models are used for analysis and representation of complex interrelations as it is possible to concentrate on the essential aspects. As most models are used for analysis and documentation within only one single development step, the information accumulated in them has to be manually reentered in the subsequent development steps. In this paper a concept for model-to-model transformations embedded in a model-driven development process is presented allowing to generate source code and circuit diagrams automatically from abstract models. This leads to an improvement of the efficiency in development of the automation system and avoids errors due to inconsistent development artifacts.