Automatic configuration of replaced field devices in an industrial plant
AssigneeABB Schweiz AG
InventorsDirk Wagener, Marcus Heege, Christoph Welte, Christian Fahrenholz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for configuring a new field device in an industrial plant includes detecting the new device, obtaining driver information including configuration parameters of the new device; determining the previously used field device, determining whether the driver information for the new device matches that for the previously used device. In case of a match, provisioning the new device with the previously used configuration parameters, and in case of no match, provisioning the new device with new configuration parameters.
Claims19
A computer-implemented method for configuring a new field device in an industrial plant that replaces a previously used field device in the industrial plant, comprising:
- detecting that the new field device is connected to a network of the industrial plant;
- obtaining driver information and/or software that allows communication with the new field device and is indicative of which configuration parameters of the new field device may be set, and how such configuration parameters shall be set;
- determining the previously used field device which is to be replaced by the new field device;
- determining whether the driver information and/or software for the new field device matches the previously used driver information and/or software for the previously used field device;
- and
- in case of a match, provisioning the new field device with previously used configuration parameters for the previously used field device, and
- in case of no match, provisioning the new field device with new configuration parameters by:
- creating, from device description information of the new field device, an instance of a configuration for the new field device;
- determining semantic meanings of the new configuration parameters in the instance of the configuration:
- determining semantic meanings of the previously used configuration parameters for the previously used field device;
- setting values of the new configuration parameters whose semantic meanings match semantic meanings of the previously used configuration parameters to the values of the previously used configuration parameters;
- and in case of semantic meanings not matching, creating the instance of configuration of the new field device further comprises one or more of:
- setting values of configuration parameters in the instance to default values given by the device description information;
- and
- setting values of configuration parameters in the instance to values given in a template configuration stored in association with the type of the new field device;
- and
- setting values of configuration parameters in the instance to values obtained from an engineering system of the industrial plant, and
- provisioning the new field device with the instance of the configuration.
A computer program, comprising machine-readable instructions stored on a tangible non-transitory storage medium that, when executed on one or more computers and/or compute instances, cause the one more computers and/or compute instances to perform a method for configuring a new field device in an industrial plant that replaces a previously used field device in the industrial plant, comprising:
- detecting that the new field device is connected to a network of the industrial plant;
- obtaining driver information and/or software that allows communication with the new field device and is indicative of which configuration parameters of the new field device may be set, and how such configuration parameters shall be set;
- determining the previously used field device which is to be replaced by the new field device;
- determining whether the driver information and/or software for the new field device matches the previously used driver information and/or software for the previously used field device;
- and
- in case of a match, provisioning the new field device with the previously used configuration parameters for the previously used field device, and
- in case of no match, provisioning the new field device with new configuration parameters by:
- creating, from device description information of the new field device, an instance of a configuration for the new field device;
- determining semantic meanings of new configuration parameters in the instance of the configuration;
- determining semantic meanings of previously used configuration parameters for the previously used field device;
- setting values of new configuration parameters whose semantic meanings match semantic meanings of previously used configuration parameters to the values of these previously used configuration parameters;
- in case of semantic meanings not matching, creating the instance of configuration of the new field device further comprises one or more of:
- setting values of configuration parameters in the instance to default values given by the device description information;
- and
- setting values of configuration parameters in the instance to values given in a template configuration stored in association with the type of the new field device;
- and
- setting values of configuration parameters in the instance to values obtained from an engineering system of the industrial plant, and
- provisioning the new field device with the instance of the configuration.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.