GRAFCET is a graphical means for formal specifications in industrial control design. In order to use these formal specifications for model-driven development of control code, it is beneficial to ensure syntactic correctness and verify the model. This paper presents a detailed meta-model for GRAFCET that includes logical and arithmetic expressions in conditions and assignments. The meta-model and additional invariants allow for creation of syntactically correct Grafcets. On this basis, a translation of GRAFCET into Guarded Action Language (GAL) is presented. The resulting transition systems in GAL allow a semantic analysis of GRAFCET by means of model checking. From these GRAFCET specifications, specification-compliant PLC code can be generated automatically.

The graphical modeling language GRAFCET is used as a formal specification language in industrial control design. To use these formal specifications for model-driven development of control code it is beneficial to ensure their syntactical and semantic correctness. Therefore in this paper, a detailed metamodel for GRAFCET is presented, which takes so-called terms into account, i.e. logical and arithmetic expressions in conditions and assignments. The meta-model and additionally proposed invariants allow to create syntactically correct GRAFCET instances. Based on this, a translation of GRAFCET to Guarded Action Language (GAL) is presented. The resulting transition system in GAL forms the basis for a semantic analysis of the GRAFCET instances by means of model checking in future research. Finally, the models are then employed for automatic code generation in Structured Text. INDEX TERMS industry automation, formal model, formal verification, model checking, model-driven engineering, GRAFCET