A Model-Based Approach to Calculate Maintainability Task Lists of PLC Programs for Factory Automation

As long-living systems, automated Production Systems (aPS) have to be adapted due to optimization and inclusion of new features in their life cycle over decades. aPS consist of electrical, mechanical, and software components, which have a complex interaction and mutual dependencies. Consequently, these heterogeneous components have to be maintained together. Thus, the change propagation analysis in aPS is a challenging task. Existing approaches to change impact analysis lack tool-support and require expert knowledge in the aPS, as well as in the machine under study and its environment. This paper presents a tool-supported approach to change propagation analysis in aPS based on initial change requests. Our approach calculates a list of maintainability tasks to implement change requests in control programs deployed on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC). To evaluate the quality and coverage of the generated task lists, we applied our approach to a community case study.