From intentions to services in modular process plants
Artan Markaj, Alexander Fay, Katharina D.C. Stärk, Nicolai Schoch, Mario Hoernicke · 2022
In the context of industrial cyber-physical systems in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, services and service-oriented architectures are being increasingly used. Services are mainly used in modular automation in the context of modular process plants. The design of services requires a high level of expertise in the field of automation as well as domain knowledge from the field of process engineering. This contribution presents an approach for the derivation of services in modular process plants from descriptions of intentions. The approach includes different ontological models for the modeling of intentions and services. The intention ontology describes goals, implementations, and requirements of the system from the viewpoint of the domain expert. To bridge the gap between the abstract objectives described by the intentions and the technically detailed services, functionality descriptions are used. A workflow for the design and selection of services from intentions is presented using the aforementioned ontological models. This approach supports the systematic design of services in the industrial context of modular process plants.