Commissioning of Industrial Automation Systems Using IEC 61499

This paper addresses the time-consuming nature of the commissioning of industrial automation systems, which often occupies 80- 90% of the project. The IEC 61131–3 standard, with its multiple languages and global variables, can hinder debugging and configuration. The IEC 61499 standard, designed for distributed and vendor-agnostic automation using an event-driven mechanism and graphical function blocks (FBs), offers a solution. Its component-based architecture with well-defined interfaces improves tracking and debugging. Employing design philosophies such as component-based, bottom-up, SOA and one-line engineering with IEC 61499 can further reduce the commissioning effort. The paper discusses debugging methods such as manual event loading and bottom-up debugging, referencing the Festo CP-Lab demonstrator. Adopting IEC 61499 with suitable design and debugging methods shows significant potential to improve the efficiency of industrial automation system commissioning.