Any global manufacturer needs to reduce production costs by continuously improving the efficiency of itsproduction systems. To keep a high availability inthe production systems with increasing complexity, operability and configurability are important variables for the control systems. Each device in the control loop holds more and more intelligence and computing power which can be used for a distributed automation system with improved efficiency and redundancy.
Today’s device controllers, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), in the production systems use the well-know and well-spread programming standard IEC 61131-3. However, this standard is not suitable for a distributed system since its definition is a system with centralized control (an “ordinary” PLC). To meet the requirements of tomorrow’s control systems, the programming standard IEC 61499 was officially introduced in 2005. The IEC 61499 standard is designed to respond to the requirements of interoperability, reconfigurability and portability which are missing in the IEC 61131-3 standard.The foundation of the IEC 61499 standard is a distributed control system using event-driven function blocks where little effort is needed to program inter-device communication and message exchange.
In this paper, the two programming standards IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61499 arecompared. Benefits of IEC 61499 arehighlightedand examples of IEC 61499-based control areprovided for betterunderstanding