Automated Control Systems are part of almost every industrial facility today. Power plants, food factories and water supply systems are but a few examples of the numerous venues where such systems can be found. Designed to coordinate and regulate the behaviour of devices operating in industrial facilities, the logic behind these systems is run through specific devices, called PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers).
If one looks at how the source code for PLCs is developed today, it is easily noticeable that it is an ad-hoc task, usually developed by a Control Engineer, who translates into source code the specifications and requirements transferred by a Process Engineer, more familiar with the plant’s operations. The consequences of this approach are no stranger to our industry: the lack of standards and dedicated tools for process modelling and simulation, the communication gap between the two expert roles, and the utilization of outdated programming languages, often carry with them time losses, and more commonly, error-littered code that leads to production downtime, with the associated costs.
WonderLogix Studio tackles the definition of requirements from a single perspective, closer to the domain of the Process Engineer as it enables modelling processes graphically. These models are later enriched with human language definitions describing the required behaviour of each one, and finally, the portrayed processes are automatically translated into clean, optimal source code fulfilling good-practice PLC programming patterns. Because the resulting code is that precise, the intervention of code developers afterwards shall be minimal, limited to review and/or small changes.
The objectives of this project are twofold: on the one hand, we aim at bringing the product beta version to a release state meeting the identified market requirements; on the other hand, a commercialization plan has been developed so as to build a solid distribution network that helps our company reaching the pinpointed target market segments.
