A two-stage modelling architecture for distributed control of real-time industrial systems: Application of UML and Petri Net

The use of UML in the design process of distributed automation systems is here proposed. UML is used to formally express system's requirements, model the uncontrolled system and design the controlled one. It is here proposed a domain transformation: to go from the informal description to UML and from UML to PN models. In this way the capability to describe the system behavior is fully exploited, while the system analysis can be more properly performed in PN domain.Furthermore, it is to show the possibility of conferring intelligence to real objects, even to immaterial objects, so that they can cooperate to fulfil the desired tasks in a distributed plant. To illustrate the methodology a real case study is used.