A Multi-Purpose Dynamic Simulation and run-time Control platform includes a virtual process environment coupled to a physical process environment, where components/nodes of the virtual and physical process environments cooperate to dynamically perform run-time process control of an industrial process plant and/or simulations thereof. Virtual components may include virtual run-time nodes and/or simulated nodes. The MPDSC includes an I/O Switch which delivers I/O data between virtual and/or physical nodes, e.g., by using publish/subscribe mechanisms, thereby virtualizing physical I/O process data delivery. Nodes serviced by the I/O Switch may include respective component behavior modules that are unaware as to whether or not they are being utilized on a virtual or physical node. Simulations may be performed in real-time and even in conjunction with run-time operations of the plant, and/or simulations may be manipulated as desired (speed, values, administration, etc.). The platform simultaneously supports simulation and run-time operations and interactions/intersections therebetween.

An industrial mission critical networking communication device is adapted from a wired industrial networking communication device to provide wireless capabilities. Accordingly, the PHY of the wired device, that is communicatively connected to a first microcontrollers, is replaced by a second microcontroller. The second microcontroller is adapted to communicate with the first microcontroller using a serial adaptation layer to ensure that the original communication interface between the PHY and the first microcontroller is maintained. The second microcontroller is further adapted with at least capabilities of wireless communication to allow for wireless communication based on a predetermined protocol, for example, the wireless IO-Link® protocol.

The present invention relates to an integrated management system for heterogeneous logistics automation equipment, including: an equipment standard protocol server adapted to receive commands from a plurality of warehouse management systems (WMS), to check equipment standard protocol identification (ESP ID) matching the received commands, and to produce work information in the form of telegram: a plurality of warehouse control systems (WCS) adapted to control the logistics automation equipment through the work information produced from the equipment standard protocol server; and a plurality of equipment control systems (ECS) adapted to receive the work information from the plurality of warehouse control systems (WCS) to control the logistics automation equipment.

Embodiments of a system including at least one access node configured to wirelessly transmit and receive signals to and from industrial devices within at least two cells of a cellular communications network deployed within a manufacturing facility; and a computer system. The computer system includes an interface connected to transmit and receive signals to and from the access node; and processing circuitry configured to: define a manufacturing process instance, MPI, identifying manufacturing operations necessary to perform a predetermined manufacturing process; allocate one of more of the industrial devices to the MPI, each allocated industrial device configured to perform at least one of the identified manufacturing operations; and implement an Controller configured to control each of the industrial devices allocated to the MPI to cooperatively perform the predetermined manufacturing process.

Methods and apparatus to virtualize a process control system are described. A described process control system includes a server cluster including one or more servers. When operating, the server cluster provides a virtual workstation or virtual server, a virtual controller to interoperate with the virtual workstation or server and to implement process control operations, and a virtual input/output device to interoperate with the virtual controller and coupled to one or more field devices within the process control system.

A method and system for networking a first time-sensitive field bus with a second time-sensitive field bus, the first time-sensitive field bus comprising a first subscriber device and having a first dedicated time domain and the second time-sensitive field bus comprising a second subscriber device and having a second dedicated time domain, the first and the second field buses being connected to each other with the aid of a gateway for data transmission.

A method for networking a first time-sensitive field bus with a second time-sensitive field bus, the first time-sensitive field bus comprising a first subscriber device and having a first dedicated time domain, and the second time-sensitive field bus comprising a second subscriber device and having a second dedicated time domain. The first time domain and the second time domain being frequency-synchronized. The first and second field buses being connected to each other via a gateway. The method includes: storing a first subscriber device identifier in the memory of the gateway; storing a second subscriber device identifier in the memory of the gateway; determining a first cycle duration of the first field bus and a second cycle duration of the second field bus by the gateway at a reference time; and determining a time offset between the first and second time domain by the gateway at the reference time.

A system may include a data delivery pipeline communicatively coupled to one or more microservices that receive a dataset transmitted through the data delivery pipeline. The system may also include a first microservice that receives a first dataset corresponding to operation technology (OT) data or information technology (IT) data and determines a second dataset based on the first dataset. The system may also include a second microservice that receives the second dataset from the first microservice via the data delivery pipeline, determines an action to perform in an industrial automation component of an industrial automation system based on an analysis of the second dataset, and transmits the action to the industrial automation component via the data delivery pipeline.

An industrial integrated development environment (IDE) supports collaborative tools that allow multiple designers and programmers to remotely submit design input to the same automation system project in parallel while maintaining project consistency. The industrial IDE also permits localized development of system projects, and provides an infrastructure for sharing and selectively synchronizing project edits among multiple locally stored versions of the system project.

The described methods and systems enable process control devices to transmit and receive device variable values in a manner that enables the receiving device to verify the integrity of the received values on a variable-by-variable basis. To facilitate verification of integrity, any desired number of variables in a message may have a data integrity check in the message. For each received value that has a data integrity check, the receiving device can calculate its own data integrity check based on the received value and a seed (known to both the transmitting and receiving devices), which it can then compare to the received data integrity check to verify if the received value has been altered during communication.