Goal-Lever-Indicator-Principle to Derive Recommendations for Improving IEC 61131-3 Control Software

In the domain of automated Production Systems (aPS), control software implements an increasing amount of functionality. Thus, its importance is steadily increasing and the reuse of high-quality software solutions becomes more and more essential to compete in the global market. For this purpose, the use of modular design principles has been identified as a success factor for the planned reused of software parts. To assess and improve the modularity of existing control software solutions, software quality measures are adopted from computer science for their use in the aPS domain, e.g., static code analysis and software metrics. However, domain experts lack experience in applying these measures target-oriented and in understanding as well as interpreting the analysis results, which is mandatory for the measures' successful application. To bridge this gap, this paper introduces the Goal-Lever-Indicator-Principle to support experts in understanding analysis results by presenting concrete recommendations for actions derived from them. The approach is demonstrated with an industrial use case.      «

In the domain of automated Production Systems (aPS), control software implements an increasing amount of functionality. Thus, its importance is steadily increasing and the reuse of high-quality software solutions becomes more and more essential to compete in the global market. For this purpose, the use of modular design principles has been identified as a success factor for the planned reused of software parts. To assess and improve the modularity of existing control software solutions, software...     »