Interface driven domain-independent modeling architecture for 'soft-commissioning' and 'reality in the loop'

As industrial manufacturing and automation systems grow in complexity, there is a need for control software engineering support. Soft-Commissioning and Reality in the Loop (RIL) are two novel approaches which allow coupling simulation models to real world entities and allow the analyst to pre-commission and test the behavior of a system, before it is completely built in reality. To be flexible and fast in building up a simulation model fulfilling the requirements of Soft-Commissioning and RIL there is a need for a component-based modeling architecture. In this paper we define the characteristic requirements, and derive an architecture out of them, which is discussed from different aspects. Finally we briefly present a simple example.