19 th International Conference on Software and Systems Engineering (ICSSEA 2006), Dec. 2006, Paris 1/9 A Model Based Approach to Address Inefficiencies of the IEC61499 Function Block Model Kleanthis Thramboulidis Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Patras, 26500 Greece Tel.: +30 2610 996436 –Fax.: +30 2610 996820 –E-mail: thrambo@ee.upatras.gr Abstract: The IEC 61499 standard of the International Electro-technical Commission constitutes the first step towards an open market in the control and automation domain. The standard provides the infrastructure required for the development of the next generation agile manufacturing systems where distribution, interoperability and re-configuration are between the most important requirements. However, even though many researchers are working during last years towards this direction, the standard has many open issues that make it insufficient to support the whole development process of distributed control applications and thus be adopted by industry. In this paper, a comparison with the Data Flow Diagram (DFD) notation and the Object Oriented (OO) paradigm is conducted; the inefficiencies of IEC 61499, at least as far as the software engineering point of view is considered, are highlighted and the way that these inefficiencies are addressed by a model-based development approach is discussed. A 4-layer architecture and a hybrid methodology are exploited to simplify the task of function block type identification, the construction of a levelled and location transparent function block network diagram, and the definition of a flexible deployment and re-deployment process on an IEC-compliant execution environment. Key words: IEC 61499, distributed control applications, control & automation, function block, Function block model, model driven development.