Plug-and-Participate for Limited Devices in the Field of Industrial Automation

This thesis is motivated by the current market situation and the trend towards more customized and indiviualized products. Starting with such turbulent markets, te vendors need to be re-configurable in order to react flexible and efficient to changed situations and environments - a trend in automation is to overcome traditionally cventralized planning systems by establishing decentralized planning facilities. An approach in this direction is the PABADIS project. The thesis, in turn, provided a major contibution to this approach by developing the concept for plug-and-participate of machines and their provided functionalities. A challange in this respect are the legacy automation devices, which are the first target area of the approach - they are characterizable as limtied devices. Therefore, the thesis provided a limited device suitable plug-and-participate technology in order to apply the PABADIS concept to legacy devices.