TABLE OF CONTENTS This Appendix is a compendium of frequently asked questions with answers concerning the development and application of the IEC 61499 Function Block Standard. The answers have been provided by international experts working in the IEC working group (IEC 65/WG6) and are not necessarily consistent with the current version of the IEC 61499 standard. The author has restructured and added additional comments to some of the answers and also provided some additional questions with answers.
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What are the benefits from using IEC 61499?
IEC 61499-compliant distributed industrial-process measurement and control systems (IPMCSs), devices, and their associated life-cycle support systems will be able to deliver a number of significant benefits to their owners and system integrators, including:
IEC 61499-compliant life cycle support systems will be able to reduce engineering costs through integrated facilities for configuration, programming and data management. Additional engineering cost savings will result from the ease of system integration provided by IEC 61499's simple yet complete model of distributed systems. This model provides hardware- and operating system-independent representations for all functions of the system, including control and information processing as well as communications and process interfaces.
Economies of scale from uniform application of common software and firmware technologies should reduce hardware costs. The most significant cost items in modern control hardware are its embedded firmware and supporting software.
Engineers and technicians will be able to
