Authors´ Reply to “Comments on Object-Oriented Modeling of Complex Mechatronic Components for the Manufacturing Industry”

In his comments to our paper published in the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 696--702, Dec. 2007), K. Thramboulidis points out many issues related to the application of the object-oriented modeling approach proposed in the paper. The comments of Thramboulidis are relevant and properly referenced, especially considering the section about unified/universal modeling language (UML), its variants (i.e., UML 1.4, UML-RT, UML 2.0) and the conceptual elements of component-based design. However, we believe that the author of the comments has focused his attention too much on the software implementation aspects, including engineering tools and run-time execution frameworks for the control software, which are actually outside the scope of the original paper. In this reply, we aim to emphasize the main contribution of the paper and analyze the issues raised in the comments, with particular regard to our plan to address them in future works.