Configuration Management for Industrial Automation

Abstract: Core Issue: Developing and maintaining industrial automation systems requires a lot of coordination of programming code. To support this task a configuration management system can be used but many companies of today find it hard to select a system that suites them best. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine various configuration management systems and evaluate them according to the needs that Tetra Pak Processing Systems 14 Business Unit Dairy, Beverage and Prepared Food (BU DBF) has. The Platform & Standards department, where the thesis has been written, has started to work with templates that are shared between different projects. This leads to more versions which make it harder to organize and structure the work. Methodology: Qualitative information has been gathered through interviews and quantitative information has been gathered through a survey. Using configuration management requires the user to understand the theory behind it and the area has been studied thoroughly. Various tests on different tools were performed according to test specifications. Conclusions: For BU DBF the largest problem was to find a configuration management tool that supported binary files, which are used for PLC and HMI, from several manufacturers. Both freeware applications and commercial tools were tested. The tool that best fulfilled the test specifications was VersionWorks from GepaSoft/Rockwell Automation. Implementing configuration management within BU DBF is something that definitely should be done and based on the results of this thesis.