Cyber physical manufacturing system Development: A test driven design method and exploratory case study
Today, manufacturing engineering companies still struggle developing cyber physical solutions. Studies suggest that inappropriate engineering methods dominated by mechanical design decisions and incompatible engineering tool landscapes are key problems that lead to isolated and potentially inconsistent specifications. To overcome the current situation, in this paper we propose a test driven approach to cyber physical manufacturing system design based on an integrated modeling technique and engineering tool called MACON. Then, we explore the applicability and potential benefits of the approach for an industry close example. Therefore, we analyze empirical data about the development process collected during tool usage. The data indicates that test driven development is applicable in principle to the cyber physical manufacturing systems domain resulting both in early test specification at various levels of the component architecture as well as in early identification of design flaws.