Supervisory device with deployed independent application containers for automation control programs

A supervisory device for supervisory and control support in an industrial automation system, the supervisory device comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a computer readable medium having stored thereon a software stack executable by the processor, the software stack comprising:
• a target host operating system designated for the supervisory device;
• and
• a plurality of independent application containers, each independent application container comprising:
• a modular application being associated with a base functionality for the supervisory device and comprising a plurality of components each configured to perform a subfunctionality, wherein each component has artifacts including a set of binaries, libraries and resources;
• and
• a guest operating system layer integrated with the artifacts of the plurality of components, wherein the guest operating system layer is platform-agnostic to the target host operating system;
• and
• a container daemon defining program modules that execute a system integration process during a development stage and program modules that execute a container image artifact during runtime of an operation stage, the container daemon configured to execute a one-time system integration between the guest operating system and the component artifacts by generating a hierarchy of image layers during development of each container to create a container image artifact of each independent application container;
• wherein for each independent application container, the container daemon is further configured to execute the container image artifact at runtime for integrating each independent application container to the target host operating system;
• wherein the independent application containers are portable for direct deployment in an operating system of a type different than that of the target host operating system and can run unchanged without requiring any change to the component artifacts.