Dealing with non-functional requirements in distributed control systems engineering

Industrial production plants are highly complex mechatronic systems. In today´s automation systems a trend for distribution of control functions can be observed. The hereby emerging challenges lead to delays and interruptions in automation projects. Especially non-functional requirements are hard to specify for later engineering phases. Therefore, a holistic engineering approach will be developed. As a first step, important challenges for the development of distributed automation systems are identified in this paper. Based on this, non-functional requirements derived from an information science point of view are adapted to the specifics of automation technology.