【正文】 others. At that time, the PLC replaced the hardwired logic with softwired logic or socalled relay ladder logic (RLL), a programming language visually resembling the hardwired logic, and reduced thereby the configuration time from 6 months down to 6 days [Moody and Morley, 1999].Although PC based control has started to e into place, PLC based control will remain the technique to which the majority of industrial applications will adhere due to its higher performance, lower price, and superior reliability in harsh environments. Moreover, according to a study on the PLC market of Frost and Sullivan [1995], an increase of the annual sales volume to 15 million PLCs per year with the hardware value of more than 8 billion US dollars has been predicted, though the prices of puting hardware is steadily dropping. The inventor of the PLC, Richard E Morley, fairly considers the PLC market as a 5billion industry at the present time.Though PLCs are widely used in industrial practice, the programming of PLC based control systems is still very much relying on trialanderror. Alike software engineering, PLC software design is facing the software dilemma or crisis in a similar way. Morley himself emphasized this aspect most forcefully by indicating `If houses were built like software projects, a single woodpecker could destroy civilization.”Particularly, practical problems in PLC programming are to eliminate software bugs and to reduce the maintenance costs of old ladder logic programs. Though the hardware costs of PLCs are dropping continuously, reducing the scan time of the ladder logic is still an issue in industry so that lowcost PLCs can be used.In general, the productivity in generating PLC is far behind pared to other domains, for instance, VLSI design, where efficient puter aided design tools are in practice. Existent software engineering methodologies are not necessarily applicable to the PLC based software design because PLCprogramming requires a simultaneous consideration of hardware and software. The software design bees, thereby, more and more the major cost driver. In many industrial design projects, more than of the manpower allocated for the control system design and installation is scheduled for testing and debugging PLC programs.In addition, current PLC based control systems are not properly designed to support the growing demand for flexibility and reconfigurability of manufacturing systems. A further problem, impelling the need for a systematic design methodology, is the increasing software plexity in largescale projects.The objective of this thesis is to develop a systematic software design methodology for PLC operated automation systems. The design methodology involves highlevel description based on state transition models that treat automation control systems as discrete event systems, a stepwise design process, and set of design rules providing guidance and measurements to achieve a successful design. The tangible oute of this research is to find a way to reduce the uncertainty in managing the control software development process, that is, reducing programming and debugging time and their variation, increasing flexibility of the automation systems, and enabling software reusability through modularity. The goal is to overe shortings of current programming strategies that are based on the experience of the individual software developer.Three、now of PLCFrom the structure is divided into fixed PLC and Module PLC, the two kinds of PLC including CPU board, I/O board, display panel, memory block, power, these elements into a do not remove overall. Module type PLC including CPU module, I/O modules, memory, the power modules, bottom or a frame, these modules can be according to certain rules bination configuration.In the user view, a detailed analysis of the CPU39。 IEC611313, 1993。 ISO 157451, 1999] have been formed to fix and disseminate stateoftheart design methods, but they normally cannot participate in advancing the knowledge of efficient program and system design.A systematic approach will increase the level of design automation through reusing existing software ponents, and will provide methods to make largescale system design manageable. Likewise, it will improve software quality and reliability and will be relevant to systems high security standards, especially those having hazardous impact on the environment such as airport control, and public railroads.The software industry is regarded as a performance destructor and plexity generator. Steadily shrinking hardware prices spoils the need for software performance in terms of code optimization and efficiency. The result is that massive and less efficient software code on one hand outpaces the gains in hardware performance on the other hand. Secondly, software proliferates into plexity of unmanageable dimensions。Today, the primary focus of most design research is based on mechanical or electrical products. One of the byproducts of this proposed research is to enhance our fundamental understanding of design theory and methodology by extending it to the field of engineering systems design. A system design theory for largescale and plex system is not yet fully developed. Particularly, the