AutomationML has been an open standard since day one. These selected contributions from our past user conferences are republished here as individually citable open-access downloads — open format, open access.
The AutomationML user conferences have produced a substantial body of work: success stories from industry, research results, and the standardisation groundwork that shaped the format. Much of it was only ever available inside a single large proceedings archive. The contributions below have been selected because they still repay reading today, and each one is now available as a separate download.
Three threads run through all of them: convergence with other standards (OPC UA, IEC 62264, IEC PAS 63131, STEP AP 242), vendor independence in practice, and open implementation — the recognition that a format is only as open as the tooling around it.
We are progressively publishing the full text of selected contributions directly on this website, so they can be read and cited without opening a PDF. Titles that are linked already have a full-text page.
The complete proceedings of each edition remain available on the past conferences page.
5th AutomationML User Conference — Gothenburg 2018
24–25 October 2018, Mölndal/Gothenburg, Sweden — hosted by ABB
AutomationML in the Oil & Gas Industry: Automated Code Generation by Means of the IEC PAS 63131
Rainer Drath, Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences · Idar Pe Ingebrigtsen, Equinor ASA
Full paper, 8 pages
System Control Diagrams are the working language of Norwegian oil and gas automation, yet they were still handed over as printed drawings. This paper shows how AutomationML carries them electronically and lets control code be generated automatically. It is the clearest example in the archive of an open format changing an entire sector’s engineering practice, and it feeds directly into IEC PAS 63131.
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Vendor-Independent Modeling and Exchange of Fieldbus Topologies with AutomationML
Rainer Drath, Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences · Markus Rentschler, Balluff GmbH · Marco Hoch and Matthias Mueller, Mitsubishi Electric Europe
Full paper, 10 pages
Almost every fieldbus organisation built its own device description language — GSDML, IODD, EDD, CSP+, FDCML — each locked to its own tool chain. This paper gives one generic AutomationML-based approach, demonstrated on IO-Link and CC-Link IE, that is reusable for any of them. If you want a single argument for why proprietary description languages are a dead end, this is it.
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Semantic Interoperability in a Heterogeneous World via AutomationML-based Mappings
Prerna Bihani, ABB Corporate Research Center Germany · Rainer Drath, Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences
Full paper, 6 pages
Applies the Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model to AutomationML and works through three approaches to semantic mapping, with their benefits and drawbacks, before proposing a best practice. The observation that most engineering data still moves on paper because a human is needed to interpret the semantics has aged uncomfortably well.
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Implementing Reference APIs for AutomationML — A Java Based Walkthrough
Ronald Rosendahl and Konstantin Kirchheim, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg · Josef Prinz, inpro
Full paper, 8 pages
An open format is only as open as the software people can build with it. This paper collects the requirements and architectures for implementing AutomationML applications and derives a strategy for reference APIs in object-oriented languages. Essential reading for anyone starting a tool integration today.
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IEC 62264-2 for AutomationML
Bernhard Wally, Christian Huemer, Alexandra Mazak and Manuel Wimmer, CDL for Model-Integrated Smart Production, TU Wien
Full paper, 7 pages
AutomationML leans towards the lower levels of the automation hierarchy, IEC 62264 / ISA-95 towards the upper. This work aligns the two on metamodel and model level and offers two combinable integration methods. It is how plant engineering data reaches MES and ERP without a custom bridge each time.
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Migration to AutomationML based Tool Chains — Incrementally Overcoming Engineering Network Challenges
Arndt Lüder, Johanna-Lisa Pauly and Konstantin Kirchheim, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg · Felix Rinker and Stefan Biffl, TU Wien
Full paper, 6 pages
Choosing a good data format is the easy part. This paper catalogues what actually obstructs an engineering data exchange migration and how to apply AutomationML incrementally to get past each obstacle — the practical companion to every success story on this page.
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AutomationML describing Components for Virtual Commissioning
Wolfgang Schlögl, Head of Digital Engineering, Siemens AG, Nuremberg
Presentation, 17 pages
Frames the component as the unit of the digital twin — product, production and performance twins sharing one description. The line of thinking that led to the AutomationML Component concept.
4th AutomationML User Conference — Esslingen 2016
18–19 October 2016, Esslingen, Germany — hosted by Festo
Automation Project Configuration: Exchange of ECAD Data between EPLAN P8 and Siemens TIA Portal
Thomas Funke, EPLAN Software & Service GmbH & Co. KG · Michael John, Siemens AG
Presentation, 19 pages
ECAD tools and PLC tools hold different views of the same automation system, and their vendors compete. Here two of them demonstrate a working exchange built on AutomationML. Of everything presented at the 2016 conference this had the most immediate practical impact, and it remains the strongest evidence that an open format changes what vendors are willing to do.
Improving the Transition and Modularity of the Virtual Commissioning Workflow with AutomationML
Anton Strahilov, EKS InTec GmbH · Ender Yemenicioglu, tarakos GmbH · Mario Thron, Holger Zipper and Matthias Riedl, ifak · Ulf Zimmermann, TWT GmbH
Full paper, 16 pages
Six organisations, one workflow, no shared tool vendor. The most detailed account in the archive of how a modular virtual commissioning chain is actually assembled across company boundaries.
AutomationML and OPC UA — Enabling Technologies for PLUGandWORK in a Smart Production
Miriam Schleipen, Fraunhofer IOSB
Presentation, 29 pages
The mapping between AutomationML and OPC UA worked through in detail: entry points into the AutomationML model, transformation rules and plug-and-work examples. The practical companion to the 2014 paper that started this line of work.
Open Semantic Meta-Model as a Cornerstone for the Design, Engineering and Management of CPS-based Factories
Stephan Weyer, Jumyung Um and Moriz Ohmer, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) · Torben Meyer, Volkswagen AG, Smart Production Lab
Full paper, 5 pages
From the EU MAYA project: an argument for an open semantic meta-model spanning design, engineering and operation of cyber-physical factories. An early statement of the position that later work on the Asset Administration Shell had to engage with.
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3rd AutomationML User Conference — Blomberg 2014
7–8 October 2014, Blomberg, Germany — hosted by Phoenix Contact
OPC UA and AutomationML — Collaboration Partners for One Common Goal: Industry 4.0
Miriam Schleipen, Robert Henßen and Olaf Sauer, Fraunhofer IOSB · Matthias Damm, ascolab GmbH · Arndt Lüder and Nicole Schmidt, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg · Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation
Full paper, 3 pages
Three pages that set the direction for the next decade. IEC 62541 for communication, IEC 62714 for description — and the case that using them together creates synergy rather than competition. The origin of the AutomationML / OPC UA companion work.
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Semantic Mapping Support for Mechatronic Objects in AutomationML
Stefan Biffl and Olga Kovalenko, CDL-Flex, TU Wien · Arndt Lüder, Nicole Schmidt and Ronald Rosendahl, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg
Full paper, 13 pages
Derives requirements for describing relations and dependencies between engineering views, then examines how AutomationML represents them. The machine-understandable-semantics problem stated clearly — and it is still the problem that ontology and Asset Administration Shell work is trying to solve.
A Minimal Tool Interface for Machinery and Equipment Engineering
Arndt Lüder and Nicole Schmidt, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg
Full paper, 9 pages
Small and medium-sized companies rarely have the capacity to build a full tool chain. This paper proposes a deliberately minimal interface so they can participate anyway. The accessibility argument for an open format, and still the right place to start for a first implementation.
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AutomationML to Describe Skills of Production Plants Based on the PPR Concept
Miriam Schleipen, Julius Pfrommer, Kiril Aleksandrov and Jürgen Beyerer, Fraunhofer IOSB · Björn Hein, Denis Stogl and Stefan Escaida, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Full paper, 5 pages
From the EU SkillPro project: describing what a production resource can do rather than only what it is, on top of the product–process–resource concept. The groundwork for capability-based matching and plug-and-produce.
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Keynote: Industrie 4.0 — Ohne Normung geht es nicht
Roland Heidel, Chairman IEC TC 65
Presentation, 36 pages — in German
The chairman of IEC TC 65 making the case that Industrie 4.0 is not achievable without standardisation. A useful historical marker for where the standardisation debate stood in 2014, from the person who chaired it.
2nd AutomationML User Conference — Böblingen 2012
9–10 May 2012, Böblingen, Germany — supported by Daimler AG
Let’s Talk AutomationML — A Concept to Achieve Iterative Interoperability Between Engineering Tools
Rainer Drath, ABB Corporate Research Center, Ladenburg
Presentation, 24 pages
Interoperability does not arrive in one step, and waiting for everyone to adopt everything is not a strategy. This is the iterative adoption argument, made in 2012 and still the honest answer to “where do we start?”.
AutomationML and JT / STEP AP 242 XML — Survey and Potential for Cooperation
Wolfgang Schlögl, Head of Digital Engineering, Siemens AG, Nuremberg
Presentation, 21 pages
The earliest systematic look at how AutomationML relates to the CAD and PLM geometry standards, and where the two worlds could cooperate rather than duplicate. Geometry exchange remains a live question, which makes this survey more useful than its age suggests.
What is Good Engineering?
Ulrich Löwen, Siemens AG Corporate Technology, Erlangen
Presentation, 22 pages
Steps back from formats and tools to ask what engineering quality and engineering maturity actually mean. The question behind every data exchange project, and the one most easily skipped.
Rights and Reuse
These contributions are republished by the AutomationML association with the agreement of the association as publisher of the proceedings. Copyright remains with the respective authors and their organisations. Please cite the original contribution and the conference edition it was presented at.
If you are an author and would like a contribution corrected, extended or removed, please contact office@automationml.org.