Int. J. Computer Aided Engineering and Technology, Vol. 3, Nos. 3/4, 2011 281 Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Behaviour and integration of service-oriented automation and production devices at the shop-floor J.M. Mendes* and F. Restivo Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering – University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal E-mail: marco.mendes@fe.up.pt E-mail: fjr@fe.up.pt *Corresponding author A.W. Colombo Schneider Electric Automation GmbH, Steinheimer Str. 117, D-63500, Seligenstadt, Germany E-mail: armando.colombo@de.schneider-electric.com P. Leitão Department of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Quinta Sta. Apolónia, Apartado 134, 5301-854 Bragança, Portugal E-mail: pleitao@ipb.pt Abstract: Automation and manufacturing systems are changing in the direction of cooperative ecosystems with heterogeneous entities. An important feature that should be considered is the vertical integration from the business needs down to the shop-floor where the real action takes place. This paper analyses the integration of shop-floor devices into the IT-enterprise but maintaining also a certain degree of independence in terms of behaviour. Service-oriented paradigm is used as the main backbone due its proven merits in the business levels and recently also in automation and production systems. In the provided example, high-level Petri nets (HLPN) demonstrate a set of useful features, namely the partial behaviour description and analysis and some parameters in the integration. The resulting application leads to an easy integration of autonomous devices in the IT-enterprise, taking especially in account the requirements of the shop-floor level. Keywords: service oriented architecture; IT-integration; Petri nets; industrial automation. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mendes, J.M., Restivo, F., Colombo, A.W. and Leitão, P. (2011) ‘Behaviour and integration of service-oriented automation and production devices at the shop-floor’, Int. J. Computer Aided Engineering and Technology, Vol. 3, Nos. 3/4, pp.281–291.