On the interoperability and its test of software in the measurement and control domain

In a case where a lot of field devices provided by many different manufacturers are linked by one network, troubles of a distributed system will be difficult to identify. We make the point that software tests of interoperability among these field devices are needed to ensure the system compatibility over a field network. First, we survey the international standards related to the measurement and control domain and point out the necessity of such software tests. Second, we describe an outline of structure of the next generation manufacturing systems and discuss in detail what is required for software tests. Finally, we propose some aspects of software tests and give a framework in the case of function blocks.