CONFIGURATION METHODOLOGY FOR VALIDATION INDUSTRIES

• US 20080097626A1
• Filed: 09/17/2007
• Published: 04/24/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Allen-Bradley Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Allen-Bradley Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: Carmount, Mark K., Weatherhead, Andrew N., Reed, Dale Edward
• Granted Patent: US 7,725,200 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/30
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/4184 characterised by fault tolerance, reliability of production system
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31483 Verify monitored data if valid or not by comparing with reference value
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31484 Operator confirms data if verified data is correct, otherwise amends data
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/02 Total factory control, e.g. smart factories, flexible manufacturing systems [FMS] or integrated manufacturing systems [IMS]

Abstract

An automation control system can be efficiently developed and maintained as a hierarchical arrangement of configured components that pass process control parameters received from a control component and return reports back to the control component. In particular, control components compare a current configuration to a validated, saved configuration in order to report a configuration status as to whether a process can be conducted as validated. Yet, changes to the configuration of the automation control system that do not affect a validated portion do not preclude continued validated processing.

Claims

1. A system that determines configuration changes in a validated system, comprising:

a module component comprising generic operations to control an industrial process, the module component further comprising a current parameter configuring the generic operations and a stored parameter defining a validated configuration of the industrial process;

an interface that modifies the current parameter; and

a reporting component responsive to the current parameter differing from the stored parameter indicating an unvalidated industrial process.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a human-machine interface responsive to the reporting component to communicate to a user the difference of the current parameter to the stored parameter.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the current parameter and the stored parameter each comprise a configuration data structure containing a plurality of record entries, the human-machine interface displaying individual entries of the current configuration data structure that do not conform to the saved configuration data structure.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the human-machine interface is responsive to a security code to enable saving the current parameter to the stored parameter.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the human-machine interface selectively modifies the current parameter to the saved parameter to restore the validated industrial process.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the component module is in control of a configurable component not utilized as part of the validated configuration of the industrial process, the reporting component ignoring changes to a configuration of the configurable component as not affecting the validated configuration.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the interface component is associated with at least one of a unit interface, an equipment phase interface, and an equipment interface.

8. The system of claim 1, the module component further comprising at least one behavior component that defines one or more functional aspects of the module component.

9. The system of claim 1, the module component further comprising at least one coordination and control component to interact with at least one control module.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one unit to communicate with the module component, the current parameter and stored parameter associated with the at least one unit.

11. A method for determining configuration changes in a validated system, comprising:

monitoring one or more module components within a validated system;

determining if a change has been made to a configuration within the module components; and

generating an automatic notification upon the detected configuration change.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising reporting the automatic notification in human intelligible form to a user.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein determining if a change has been made to the configuration further comprises compared a saved configuration with a current configuration.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising saving a current configuration as the saved configuration subject to an authorizing security code.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising restoring the saved configuration to the current configuration to restore the validated system.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising ignoring configuration changes to controllable components not utilized by the validated system.

17. A system for determining configuration changes in a validated system, comprising:

means for monitoring one or more module components within a validated system;

means for determining if a change has been made to a configuration within the module components; and

means for generating an automatic notification upon the detected configuration change.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising means for differentiating configuration changes that do not affect the validated system.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising means for restoring the current configuration to a validated configuration.

20. A computer readable medium having a data structure stored thereon, comprising:

a module component comprising generic operations to control an industrial process, the module component further comprising a current parameter configuring the generic operations and a stored parameter defining a validated configuration of the industrial process;

an interface that modifies the current parameter; and

a reporting component responsive to the current parameter differing from the stored parameter indicating an unvalidated industrial process.