An IEC 61499 application generator for scan-based industrial controllers

In order to cope with today's market uncertainties, manufacturing is required to rapidly adapt and react to changes and unpredictable scenarios. These are currently among the main research and development topics in order to reveal new approaches and methodologies to achieve these goals. The Industrial Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) created the IEC 61499 (function block) standard. This standard proposes an open architecture for distributed industrial-process measurement and control systems (IPMCS). The IEC 61499 defines the basic concepts and methodology for the design of modular reusable distributable systems, and paves the way for the new reconfigurable and flexible manufacturing. This paper presents the development of a software tool (IEC 61499 application generator) that enables the deployment of IEC 61499 applications to scan-based embedded controllers. However, the IEC 61499 standard foundations rely on an event-based model. The paper describes an approach to implement an event-based architecture on a scan-based industrial controller.