Master Thesis - smart factory lab Software-defined Automation

30 credits master thesis – smart factory lab

Software-defined Automation

- Validation of Virtual PLCs in Industrial Automation Environments

Background

Manufacturing industries are facing increasing demands for production flexibility. In part, due to shorter technology lifecycles, the necessity to adapt to increasing product changes and frequent software updates in the field components used, pushed in part from a security perspective. However, traditional industrial automation systems remain strongly dependent on dedicated hardware, making modifications, upgrades, and commissioning time-consuming and resource-intensive. Software-Defined Automation (SDA) offers a potential path towards more flexible and adaptable production systems by decoupling control functionality from dedicated hardware and applying software practices to the development of automation solutions.

Virtual and software-based Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are among the technologies enabling this transition, allowing control applications to run on different computing infrastructures, including industrial PCs, virtual machines, containers, and potentially remote data centers. However, moving control applications away from dedicated hardware isn't only about ensuring real-time performance, determinism, communication latency, and system reliability. It is necessary to effectively test the application in question and not generalize for the whole industry, given the many connections to brownfield machines that exist today.

The Smart Factory Lab at Scania is an experimental test environment that explores, assesses, and pilots new technologies before they are adopted in Scania’s production processes. We are looking for motivated and creative students to join our Smart Factory Lab for their Master thesis. You will have the opportunity to work in a dynamic and collaborative environment, where you can test and validate new technologies, methods, and solutions in close collaboration with our internal and external stakeholders. To learn more about the Smart Factory, visit Link.

Assignment

This thesis aims to bridge the gap between research and industrial practice by deploying and evaluating virtual and software-based PLCs across different execution environments. Beyond performance benchmarking, the objective is to apply and assess existing evaluation methodologies in representative industrial scenarios and develop a structured, repeatable framework for deploying, testing and validating virtual PLC applications.

Using the existing infrastructure, the students will deploy multiple vPLCs representing different applications, deploy the necessary software to perform the performance evaluation and develop a workflow that engineers can use to quickly deploy and validate the correct functioning of the vPLC for their application. The work may include:

• Investigating the requirements for different applications.
• Collecting and preparing data and programs.
• Run tests and analyse data
• Documenting the results and developing recommendations for future applications.

Background and time plan

Experience with IEC 61131 programming languages, Python, docker, is beneficial but not necessarily required.

• Students in Computer Science, Mechatronics, Electronics, Robotics or Engineering, who bring some background in:
  • Control systems
  • Programming
  • Computer architecture and engineering

Number of students: 1

Start date: January 2027 (20 weeks)

Location: Södertälje, Sweden (at least 60% on-site)