Rapid virtual prototyping of PLC-based control system

As business environments are rapidly changing, the manufacturing system must be reconfigured to adapt to various customer needs. In order to cope with this challenge, it is quintessential to design and verify industrial control logic rapidly and easily during the life cycle of manufacturing system. The objective of proposed rapid virtual prototyping method for the verification of industrial control logic is to improve limitations of existing control logic verification methods and ladder programming. By proposed method, logic control code can be easily modifiable to accommodate changes in manufacturing plant configuration. Design of plant layout model and control logic model is designed independently and is executed simultaneously in integrated manner to reflect the design practice of automation system. Control logic is designed and executed using UML activity diagram without considering complicated control behaviour to deal with current trend of reconfigurable manufacturing systems.