Extending Software-Defined Automation to Field Device Configuration and Firmware Update Support

Abstract

Industrial automation systems continue to rely on manual engineering processes for configuring and maintaining field devices and PLCs, creating a bottleneck, thus opening an opportunity for the adoption of software-defined automation (SDA). While SDA promises flexibility and reduced engineering effort, its application to system configuration remains largely unexplored. This paper addresses this gap by extending SDA with DevOps principles and automated pipelines. It proposes two methods as initial steps. The first method focuses on automated configuration of PROFINET field devices using General Station Description Markup Language (GSDML) files through a command line interface (CLI). The second method proposes a Firmware Update Analyzer assisting engineering by identifying feasible update paths for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and field devices.