USING PROTOCOL STATE MACHINES TO SUPPORT SIMULATION-BASED EMULATION PROJECTS

摘要

Emulation is used to offer a simulated material flow system for the process of software development and commissioning. The integration of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) with an emulation model is an error prone process and involves multiple stakeholders, including emulation engineers and control engineers. Typically, there is no complete formal description of the interface communication between the MES and the emulation model. This article suggests the use of protocol state machines to firstly formally describe the interface communication and secondly analyze emulation experiments based on the log files of the involved systems. The article further presents a case study and a prototype which have successfully applied the concept of protocol state machines.