Networked Automation Systems (NAS) have gained increasing significance in recent years. The connection of controllers and intelligent devices via networks allows more flexibility and shorter time-to-market in the design of automation systems for single machines as well as for complete manufacturing plants. Since all those systems need to fulfill given real-time requirements the verification of time behavior is an important task in the engineering process. Therefore, methods and tools have to be developed that are able to cope with the prevalent heterogeneous system architectures and the variety of different real-time requirements. This paper outlines a concept for solving this challenging task and as a first step in realizing this vision presents a graphical method for modeling real-time requirements and architectural properties of NAS.     «

Networked Automation Systems (NAS) have gained increasing significance in recent years. The connection of controllers and intelligent devices via networks allows more flexibility and shorter time-to-market in the design of automation systems for single machines as well as for complete manufacturing plants. Since all those systems need to fulfill given real-time requirements the verification of time behavior is an important task in the engineering process. Therefore, methods and tools have to be...     »