Managing control software variability in Cyber-Physical Production Systems: The V4rdiac approach

Abstract

Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPSs) are highly configurable and versatile production systems that utilize diverse hardware components through control software. Managing control software variants in CPPS development is challenging as variation points in the control software stem from multiple engineering disciplines. Furthermore, there is a lack of mechanisms to explicitly describe control software variants as part of the software. In this paper, we present an extension of the Variability for 4diac (V4rdiac) approach and investigate its usefulness in managing control software variants based on multidisciplinary variability in CPPS development and delta modeling. We extend the approach by considering its application engineering activities to produce client-specific control software variants. We also present a novel mechanism to visualize deltas in control software to reduce the effort of implementing and maintaining deltas. We apply V4rdiac in two case studies and conduct an additional user study with four participants from industry to evaluate its usefulness. The evaluation results confirm that the engineers were able to successfully manage the control software variants. The results also show that V4rdiac can be easily learned and increases industrial practitioners’ productivity in managing control software.