UNICOS Evolution: CPC Version 6

The UNICOS (UNified Industrial COntrol System) framework was created back in 1998. Since then a noticeable number of applications in different domains have used this framework. Furthermore UNICOS has been formalized and its supervision layer has been reused in other kinds of applications (e.g. monitoring or supervisory tasks) where a control layer is not necessarily UNICOS oriented. The process control package has been reformulated as the UNICOS CPC package (Continuous Process Control) and a reengineering process has been followed. The drive behind these noticeable changes was (1) being able to upgrade to the new more performing IT technologies in the automatic code generation, (2) being flexible enough to create new additional device types to cope with other needs (e.g. Vacuum or Cooling and Ventilation applications) without major impact on the framework or the PLC code baselines and (3) enhance the framework with new functionalities (e.g. recipes). This publication addresses the motivation, changes, new functionalities and results obtained. It introduces in an overall view the technologies used and changes followed, emphasizing what has been gained for the developer and the final user. Finally some of the new domains where UNICOS CPC has been used will be illustrated.