Model-based Testing of supporting testing of PAC based controlling systems in industrial plants - A case study in printing plants

Abstract: Context. Testing is a very critical process to evaluate whether a related function is correctly implemented in the control system. There is an upward trend to using PAC based control system in the automation production context. However, currently, most testing of PAC based controlling system is in manual testing, which has low efficiency and high complexity. Furthermore, there has been little research on the systematic testing of PAC in an industry environment. Objectives. Due to this problem, this study is to investigate whether a model-based testing method can overcome the challenge of manual testing and improve the testing effectiveness in PAC based controlling system. Methods. We use three steps to achieve the objective, and the first one is to implement a systematic mapping study to find existing model-based testing method that is using in the industrial area, what the process and the context. The second one is to implement a case study in a printing house, to see what the real challenge of manual testing, the third one is to find if exist MBT method could be used under such context to overcome challenges. Results. Through mapping study and case study, we found there are many testing methods and implement under diverse context, but none of them focus on the PAC based controlling system. And we found there exist MBT that also can be used in PAC based controlling system to mitigate some manual testing challenges. Conclusions. In our thesis, we implement a mapping study from 38 papers to collect data for existing model-based testing methods to have a deep understanding of this area. We found there are five main contexts that MBT are usually being used and we extract implement process and advantages and disadvantages for MBT methods which value to practitioners and researchers. And we conducted a case study in a printing house in Switzerland to observe the challenges of manual testing of PAC based controlling system. We found one exist MBT method that can be used in our context that makes the test case generation step more effective. And we proposed a simulation testing model that hopefully can address all the manual testing challenges by combined with the exist MBT method.