Some implementations of the disclosure are directed to tapping input/output (I/O) data from an industrial control system (ICS) or applying the tapped I/O data to a learned model to perform predictive or prescriptive maintenance. In one implementation, a method comprises: tapping I/O data from a controller of an ICS while the controller executes first control code to control one or more devices of the ICS; transmitting the tapped I/O data over a network to a second system; and executing, via the second system, second control code comprising an original or modified version of all or a subset of the first control code of the ICS, wherein the second control code executes in response to receiving the tapped I/O data. The output of executing the second control code may be provided to a model to predict a future event involving the ICS or to prescribe maintenance of the ICS.

A method for real-time data communication between subscribers in an automation network is provided. The automation network includes an active subscriber, a plurality of passive subscribers and at least a connecting unit. The method includes the active subscriber arranging n data packets to be transmitted in a transmission order with a total occupancy time duration of the transmission order, performing an optimizing procedure for determining an optimized transmission order with minimum total occupancy time, and transmitting the n data packets in the optimized transmission order to the passive subscribers. An active subscriber for carrying out the method and an automation network comprising an active subscriber are also provided.

Provided is a simulation technique that allows the program verification to be more efficiently performed. A simulation system includes: a simulator that executes simulation of an operation of one or more devices; a data input unit that obtains one or more execution times in the simulation, positional information of each one of objects in the simulation, and a value of each one of one or more variables referred to by a program to operate the devices; a data recorder that stores, as a first log, positional information of the objects and value of the variables for each of the one or more execution times in a manner that positional information and value are associated with each other; and a displayer that displays positional information of the objects and value of the variables for each of the one or more execution times included in first log.

Template data indicates at least one designated processing item, first execution order of at least one designated processing item, and an insertion position at which insertion of a new processing item is permitted in a first flow in which at least one designated processing item is arranged according to the first execution order. Additional data indicates at least one additional processing item and second execution order of the at least one additional processing item. A program executing unit executes a program in which a second flow in which at least one additional processing item is arranged according to second execution order is inserted into the insertion position in the first flow based on the template data and the additional data. Thus, a desired program can be easily executed using a common flow and an individual flow.

A distributed control system includes: a plurality of control devices; a process IO master device shared by the control devices and including an output authority table and an output data memory having areas for storing data outputted from the control devices; and a plurality of process IO modules connected to the process IO master device and each connected to a sensor/actuator, wherein the output authority table provides an authority that determines the control device of which output data is to be adopted, for each of addresses corresponding to the actuators.

To provide adaptiveness to data collected on an industrial automation device, a test is used for a specific need. A set of parameter values to be used during the test are temporary and send to the industrial automation device with an indication of a test. Before the test is run, existing parameter values are backed up, and they are restored after the test.

According to an aspect, there is provided method for analyzing movement. Initially, information on one or more desired movement properties for a moving element of a mechanical system powered by an electrical machine which is controlled by a drive is maintained in a memory of a wireless sensing device. The wireless sensing device including one or more sensors is detachably fixed to the moving element of the mechanical system. The one or more sensors include one or more kinematic sensors. The wireless sensing device acquire results of a plurality of measurements performed by the wireless sensing device while the moving element is in motion. During the acquiring, the wireless sensing device compares results of the plurality of measurements with the one or more desired movement properties and communicates with the drive to adjust one or more drive parameters based on the comparing.

A control apparatus for performing control processing and user period processing within a control period for an industrial machine includes processing circuitry that sets content of the control processing, and sets an upper limit of the user period processing. The user period processing is different from the control processing.

An optimal control method for wastewater treatment process (WWTP) based on a self-adjusting multi-task particle swarm optimization (SA-MTPSO) algorithm belongs to the field of WWTP. To balance the relationship between the effluent water quality (EQ) and energy consumption (EC) and achieve optimization online quickly, the invention establishes a data-based multi-task optimization model for WWTP to describe the relationship between the control variables and EQ, EC. Then, the SA-MTPSO algorithm is adopted to solve the optimal set-points of the nitrate nitrogen and dissolved oxygen concentration for WWTP. The PID controller is used to track the optimal set-points, so as to reduce EC while ensuring EQ, and realize the online optimal control of WWTP.

A system for production of liquid food (P) comprises a food processing arrangement (2) and a computer device (3), e.g. a PLC. The computer device (3) sequentially executes a control program (5A) to control the food processing arrangement (2) to perform processing steps for producing the liquid food (P) from one or more ingredients in accordance with a predefined recipe. The program comprises command instructions that each allocates a respective processing step to a predefined control command among a predefined set. To enable parallelism, despite the sequential execution by the computer device (3), the set of control commands comprises a start command which is associated, by the computer device (3), with an action of: starting the food processing step that is allocated to the start command and proceeding, without waiting for the food processing step to be completed, to a subsequent instruction in the list of instructions.