Enabling Distributed, Loosely Coupled Systems. Distribution is inevitable in industrial environments. The larger a production plant is, the more distribution there usually is. A production plant may even consist of several factories that have a dedicated task each. Loose coupling is a fundamental design principle in COCOP. The goal is to enable an environment where various modules interact in a way that hides the internal details of each module. That is, the interfaces of modules should only expose their functionality or contents, not the underlying platform or implementation technologies. In addition, the integration technologies should be such that enable the modules to operate with minimal dependencies to one another, and their mutual integration should be easy. Point-to-point integration should be avoided. Point-to-point means direct connections between systems, which often leads to a high number of direct dependencies between systems. Then, scalability issues would appear, as one of more systems are changed, updated or replaced in the future. The downside of a bus approach is that producers of data and events do not know who and how information is utilised. As a result, additional information security measures may be needed in the message bus or even in the plant-wide control applications built on top. COCOP focuses on the integration between systems rather than the systems themselves. Thus, COCOP does not provide engineering tools, run-time of controllers or similar ready-to-use applications. The COCOP project will provide complete control solutions for improving the operation of two pilot cases. Nonetheless, one of the main value elements generated in COCOP is the underlying concept focused on the integration between system. This concept enables an easy integration of the systems (as demonstrated in the project’s use cases) by providing means for connecting events and data from the underlying systems, and building advanced plant-wide monitoring and control on top of this information.
Enabling Distributed, Loosely Coupled Systems. Distribution is inevitable in industrial environments. The larger a production plant is, the more distribution there usually is. A production plant may even consist of several factories that have a dedicated task each. Loose coupling is a fundamental design principle in COCOP. The goal is to enable an environment where various modules interact in a way that hides the internal details of each module. That is, the interfaces of modules should only expose their functionality or contents, not the underlying platform or implementation technologies. In addition, the integration technologies should be such that enable the modules to operate with minimal dependencies to one another, and their mutual integration should be easy. Point-to-point integration should be avoided. Point-to-point means direct connections between systems, which often leads to a high number of direct dependencies between systems. Then, scalability issues would appear, as one of more systems are changed, updated or replaced in the future. The downside with a bus approach is that producers of data and events do not know who and how information is utilised. As a result, additional information security measures may be needed in the message bus or even in the plant-wide control applications built on top. COCOP focuses on the integration between systems rather than the systems themselves. Thus, COCOP does not provide any engineering tools, run-time of controllers or similar concrete applications. Instead, it is an intermediary for connecting and accessing events and data.
