Development of a Unified Function Library for Composable and Generatable Skills in Process and Manufacturing Control

In a significant move towards enhancing flexibility in industrial automation, the development of adaptable and scalable control components (CCs) as control-related skills in process and manufacturing industry aims at supporting effective management of complex production systems. This research seeks to develop CC architecture design methods. As a basis, a unified library of elementary functions is designed to enable creation of CCs. With a focus on enabling dynamic CC composition and skill generation, we aim to provide a systematic and scalable approach to flexibility in control applications. The primary objective is to establish a proof of concept for the proposed function library, demonstrating its versatility and effectiveness via validating various procedures. Through the combination of a conceptual framework and prac-tical implementations, this paper validates the potential impact of a unified, composable CCs in enhancing adaptability and re-sponsiveness within control applications in industrial production. Furthermore, the machine-readable functionality description of CCs enhances their reusability and adaptability and thus increase the flexibility and efficiency of production processes. This lays the basis for semantic interoperability which is required to integrate the CC framework into capability-based control application configuration, particularly within the Industry 4.0 framework.