Analyzing the engineering effort for the commissioning of industrial automation systems

In the industrial automation a paradigm shift from centralized, static automation structures to reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) might be lie ahead. RMS are seen as a key enabler for the required changeability of future production companies since they can reduce the engineering effort needed for the reconfiguration of existing or the construction of new production systems. However, it is not clear how the companies can benefit from RMS in detail. For example, the reduction of engineering effort cannot be expressed in figures by today. But such information is necessary to convince the industry of the advantages of the new production principle. Indeed, existing RMS paradigms like Service-Oriented Architectures are rarely used in the practice of automation. The basis for analyzing the advantages of RMS is an analysis of the status quo in the industrial automation. Regarding the engineering effort of current automation systems, this paper will present a case study considering the effort occurring during the commissioning process of a production system constructed by state-of-the-art components. The evaluation of the study can serve as a reference when comparing the engineering effort of RMS with today´s systems.