Management of control systems software development.

March, C.T. and Kay, J.T.

Abstract
Guidelines are presented for the planning and development of brewery process control software systems. Because of the rapid pace of change, the development process and the system itself must be flexible enough to adapt and expand as innovations appear which might otherwise render it obsolute, and procedures must be set up to allow changes to be made as necessary during the course of a project. Common problems, including neglect of the time and cost of programming for data movements between devices within a hardware network, uncertainty about the details of process technology and cost cutting at the expense of flexibility, are briefly discussed. The main elements of a software development project are described. Subjects covered include "need identification", cost benefit analysis, basic specification, identifying potential suppliers, evaluating them and making the final selection, final system definition, budget review, standardising programming procedures and documentation, allocation of identifying "addresses" to hardware items to enable data movement software to be written, the use of programming techniques intended to facilitate program maintenance and the detection and correction of errors, initial system testing, system startup and operational trials, reviewing and "fine tuning".
Keywords : brewery computer control planning process control programming software