Impact of Modularization and Coupling on the Complexity of Industrial Control and Automation Systems

Coupling could be an arbitrary property to Industrial Automation and Control Systems (ICAS) with a significant impact on complexity. Different software design approaches may result in coupling between software modules that either increase or decrease the overall system complexity. This paper proposes using the Cynefin Framework to guide the software design patterns used during the high-level design of software architecture, with the intent of reducing components coupling and overall system complexity.