Automation engineering of hybrid plants

Hybrid plants as a hybrid form of monolithic and modular plant components will become increasingly important in the future, as purely modular plants do not bring the desired advantages for every use case. The automation of such plants is still missing. In this paper, an approach for conceptual modelling of automation systems of hybrid plants based on Function Modules is presented. The presented meta-model serves as a basis for the synthesis of a systematic workflow. As a result, an extended workflow for the design of automation solutions for hybrid plants is presented and aspects such as nesting and parameterization of Function Modules are discussed as well as a prototypical implementation is presented. The approach presented here supports the conceptual design of the automation of hybrid plants and guides the process and automation engineers by a systematic methodology.