via aws.amazon.com => original post link
Factory or intralogistics automation, which can include assembly stations, sortation stations, robots, and conveyors, are programmed and operated by their respective native controllers or programmable logic controllers (PLCs). These controllers execute programs to control physical equipment to accomplish a task—for example, painting a car with the specified color or sorting an item by its barcode according to its final destination. Depending on the equipment and the process, PLC programs may be developed by equipment vendors, systems integrators, or factory automation engineers. In a factory, multiple systems running various PLC codes are integrated and commissioned end-to-end for seamless operations of the production workflow. The code, its recipes, and its versions also need to be continuously maintained to run the automation at its optimum level. Given the complexity of dealing with multiple vendor systems and code collaborators, it can be quite challenging to implement change control and manage the lifecycle of these critical code assets. This blog post is the first of a three-part-series that details how Amazon Web Services (AWS) brings modern DevOps, Digital Twin and Virtual Commissioning technologies to develop, test, commission and maintain the automation code. This article covers automation programming best practices from operational perspective.
Traditional automation code development and maintenance