Change management methodologies for industrial automation and information systems
AssigneeRockwell Automation Technologies, Inc.
InventorsWerner Schnabele, Günter Friedrich Schunck
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods that facilitate electronic audit recording and tracking of interactions in an industrial control system via employing a differentiation engine that supplies an object-oriented presentation of an audit trail—and further present a view of a desired segment associated with a PLC program (e.g., a particular run of the PLC program), for an object that an audit is requested for. A user (e.g., a customer of the industrial process) can initially identify an object and subsequently view typically all changes to such identified object. Accordingly, a general requirement for checking every version to determine a change to the object is mitigated.
Claims23
An electronic audit system, comprising:
- one or more processors;
- one or more memory communicatively coupled to at least one of the one or more processors, the one or more memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions, comprising:
- a differentiation engine configured to generate an object-oriented presentation of an audit trail for a controller program in an industrial control environment, wherein the object-oriented presentation of the audit trail is configured to identify changes to the controller program associated with respective runs of the controller program;
- and
- a view selection component, associated with the differentiation engine, configured to utilize the object-oriented presentation to display changes associated with a selected object of the controller program during a particular run of the controller program.
A method of auditing an industrial control process, comprising:
- employing one or more processors executing computer executable instructions embodied on one or more non-transitory computer readable storage mediums to perform acts, comprising:
- identifying an object to be monitored, wherein the object is included among various versions of a controller program for executing the industrial control process ;
- generating an object-oriented presentation of an audit trail for the object;
- based on the object-oriented presentation, identifying the changes to the controller program associated with the one or more respective runs of the controller program;
- and
- based on the object-oriented presentation, presenting changes to the object associated with one or more respective runs of the controller program including presenting an indication of a respective run of the one or more respective runs during which a change of the changes occurred.
The method of 15 further comprising formatting data received from the controller into objects.
An electronic audit system, comprising:
- means for packaging data received from a controller into one or more objects;
- means for generating an object-oriented presentation of an audit trail for a controller program in an industrial control environment, wherein the object-oriented presentation presents changes to a plurality of objects associated with one or more respective runs of the controller program, wherein the changes are presented in a manner indicating a respective run as a result of which a change occurred to an object, and
- means for displaying changes associated with a selected object of the plurality of objects during a run of the controller program.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising computer executable instructions that, in response to execution by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations, comprising:
- identifying an object to be monitored, wherein the object is included among various versions of a controller program for controlling an industrial process;
- generating an object-oriented presentation of an audit trail for the object;
- and
- as a function of the object-oriented presentation, presenting changes to the object associated with one or more respective runs of the controller program, wherein the changes are presented in a manner indicating a respective run of the one or more respective runs during which a change of the changes occurred;
- and
- selecting a view showing changes to the object associated with a run of the one or more respective runs of the controller program.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.