9. Engineering Workflow and Software Tool Chains of Automated Production Systems

Application fields of automated production systems are varied, e.g. automotive, aerospace and food industry, just to name a few. The complexity of such production systems has significantly been increased in the last years, (Koren et al., CIRP Ann Manuf Technol 48(2):527–540, 1999). This increase was a result of the increased complexity and variance of products. As a result of this, the engineering workflow of automated production system has continuously been adapted to new requirements. In this regards, this chapter shows and describes the current engineering workflow of automated production systems based on experience in the field of production system for the automotive industry. The main focus of this description is set on the established tool-chains and used tools to create engineering information as well as data formats to save and exchange information between tools and involved personnel. In the introduction of this chapter, differences between an automated production system and a cyber-physical system are given. Current production systems could be named CPPS but this term is not popular in the field of production system builder as well as production owners. But in spite of that the end of this chapter gives an outlook of the future of automated production systems in direction of CPPS.