ASID: Advanced system for process control towards intelligent specialization in the power engineering fiele

The paper presents the system architecture, development and prototype implementation of a new integrated system for simulation of automated industrial processes using advanced technologies, in accordance with CPS/Industry 4.0 principles. The need to develop such a system is underscored by the interest of the educational stakeholders: students, faculty members, high-level industry partners, for an educational system to be used in specialized training in interdisciplinary areas including edge systems in terms of modern control technologies, open systems available to be reconfigured upon request with other technologies and mission-critical applications for different process engineering fields such as key energy applications. The process simulator can be operated in educational environments as follows: as didactic equipment for learning and deepening PLCs programming languages skills; equipment for testing various complex scenarios of some energy processes while allowing on-demand reconfiguration for some industrial systems which cannot be implemented in reality due to the high cost and/or the operational safety. Given its properties - flexibility, interoperability, open architecture, compatibility in communication, friendly human-machine interface and industrial applications, ASID is able to cover a vast array of teaching scenarios as well as serve as a platform for control algorithm implementation and testing. The modular configuration allows for increased versatility and flexibility and the long-term competitiveness of the final demonstrator is assured through hardware and software updates.