Comparing industrial logic design methods used in the automotive industry

In this paper we present a method of comparing logic control design methodologies very early in their development, before integrated development environments are complete and extensive user testing can be performed. We base this comparison on a framework of the process that is needed to create and debug logic. This comparison method provides objective measures that can be used to compare existing industrial logic control design methodologies (such as ladder diagrams and flow charts) with more recently developed academic methods (such as Petri nets or state machines). We demonstrate this comparison by comparing ladder diagrams, Petri nets and modular finite state machines.