Control plus – Engineering Framework

Our control-independent software system Control plus is impressive as an engineering environment based on modular design. In addition to the efficient development tool Control plus Studio, the basic system with Control plus HMI offers intuitive and standardized user interfaces and securely executes the control software in the Control plus PLC runtime environment.

Control plus not only reduces development costs, but also makes the machines themselves more efficient and ensures transparency: Machines based on Control plus can be easily integrated into existing IT infrastructures. The Control plus Machine Hub also enables manufacturer and platform-independent data exchange with other IT systems. The Control plus Code Checker always keeps an eye on the quality of the software.

With the central development tool Control plus Studio, you will build up the structure for your machine project step-by-step – regardless of the controller manufacturer. You will integrate and parameterize your device objects using drag and drop, configure a process-specific machine visualization, define information services as well as diagnostic functions and generate your code. Development times can be reduced by up to 50 percent thanks to the centralized and unique data input for control, visualization and data management.

Efficient control software is required for the best possible machine utilization with minimum downtimes. It must take into account all the individual parameters of your production system and ensure that machines and systems run economically, stably and reliably. The control software in the Control plus runtime environment executes the machine sequence and the processes in the machine. It adapts flexibly to hardware of different performance classes.

From the individual machine with manual operation to the automated production line – the standardized Control plus programming framework for the control software ensures that all Control plus machines behave in the same way. This simplifies work enormously during machine operation: The operating personnel do not have to adapt to different software for every machine, can easily integrate new system components and directly compare data from different sources, for example, machine messages.

The machine visualization can be fully integrated in the Control plus development environment – for consistent and fast work during project creation. A standardized framework of objects is available for configuring the visualization, which can be easily placed using drag & drop. These include user administration, operating mode switching, language settings and error display. Thanks to the user administration, the user interface can be very easily adapted to role and user concepts. In addition, Control plus enables the configuration of several user interfaces per machine.

In modern production, all machines are networked. For this purpose, machine data is transferred to other IT systems to enable comprehensive evaluations. The Control plus Machine Hub makes all data from a machine (e.g., machine structure, installed software, live data such as measured values or events, network status, etc.) available on a standardized interface – simply and securely. For this, we use the latest communication technologies (REST).

The quality of the software is our top priority. The use of several programmers on one machine can quickly lead to fluctuating code quality. Maintaining machines in the field can also be difficult if there are no clear rules for programming. For this we have developed the Control plus Code Checker. It allows a fully automatic code check according to the Control plus coding guidelines. In this way, the Code Checker ensures that the PLC code does not impede maintenance work and also provides a quick overview of the code quality.