mINA-DL: A Novel Description Language Enabling Dynamic Reconfiguration in Industrial Automation Michael Wienke Fraunhofer IOSB-INA Competence Center Industrial Automation Langenbruch 6, 32657 Lemgo, Germany michael.wienke@iosb-ina.fraunhofer.de Sebastian Faltinski inIT - Institut Industrial IT OWL University of Applied Sciences Liebigstr. 87, 32657 Lemgo, Germany sebastian.faltinski@hs-owl.de Oliver Niggemann Fraunhofer IOSB-INA Competence Center Industrial Automation Langenbruch 6, 32657 Lemgo, Germany oliver.niggemann@iosb-ina.fraunhofer.de J¨ urgen Jasperneite inIT - Institut Industrial IT OWL University of Applied Sciences Liebigstr. 87, 32657 Lemgo, Germany juergen.jasperneite@hs-owl.de Abstract Production facilities have to cope with fast changing market demands—leading to a need for high adaptability of the manufacturing plant. Especially the manual adap- tion of the automation systems causes high costs and sig- nificant downtimes. Here, an approach for an automatic adaption of the automation system is presented. The major challenges for an automatic adaptability of the automation system are (i) dynamically modifiable net- works, (ii) a real-time middleware transporting variables within the network independently of the automation topol- ogy, and (iii) a semantic-based mechanism that allows one plant module to identify which signals are needed from an- other module. This paper describes a real-time middleware for indus- trial automation (mINA). It focuses especially on prob- lem (iii), the mechanism to discover and identify required process signals. The functionality is based on a newly defined description language (mINA-DL), i.e. the mid- dleware can use further semantic information about the signals. The middleware (ii) communicates by means of a real-time publish/subscribe concept and provides OPC UA compliance which also allows an easy integration with the manufacturing execution system (MES). Furthermore, a first prototypical implementation of the middleware is described and assessed using a test environment. 1. Introduction The situation of today’s production facilities is affected by an increase of product variants, a shortening of product life cycles, and an international competitive situation [6]. So the production facilities have to provide a high adapt- ability to react on fast changing customer demands in a cost efficient way. At present, modular production facilities are composed of several intelligent Process Modules (PM). A PM repre- sents a mechanical unit and an intelligent control device. Each control device can be connected to I/O-modules via an industrial network or directly to sensors/actuators. A control algorithm, programmed e.g. in an IEC 61131 con- sistent way, is downloaded to the control device, to control the mechanical unit of the PM. An example of a use case containing three PMs is illus- trated in figure 1. The PMs are part of the ”Lemgoer Mod- ellfabrik”, a research plant for handling bulk goods [10]. PM ”Filling” fills bottles with bulk good and transports           Figure 1. A use case containing three PMs them to PM ”Conveyor”. Subsequently, the bottles are conveyed to the end of the conveyor belt of PM ”Con- veyor” and stopped. Then, PM ”Robot” can start the robot to pick up the bottles. Typically the PMs are manufactured by different ven- dors. To coordinate the holistic production process, in- dividual PMs have to communicate with each other. Re- ferring to the example, PM ”Filling” needs a signal from PM ”Conveyor” that the bottles can be transported to PM ”Conveyor”. But the individual PMs are designed inde- pendently which leads to several problems when a plant and its automation system are changed: 1. When PMs are added, changed, or removed, the net- work configuration must be changed leading to dy- namically configurable networks.