ABSTRACT
Global competition in the manufacturing sector is becoming fiercer and fiercer, with fast evolving requirements that must now take much more into account: rising product variety; product individualization; volatile markets; increasing relevance of value networks; shortening product life cycles. European leadership and excellence in manufacturing are being significantly threatened by the huge economic crisis that hit the Western countries over the last years. Current worldwide landscape is seeing continuously growing value creation from digitization, with digital technologies increasingly playing the central role in value creation for the entire economy. The core motivation for Daedalus was therefore born by the awareness that purely technological advancements in themselves are not enough to satisfy the need of innovation of the industrial automation market. During the last 20 years, the standardization and research efforts related to control software for industrial automation was focused on improving quality and reliability while reducing development time.
