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IEC 61499 is a standard for modelling distributed control systems for use in industrial automation, and is already having an impact on the design and implementation of industrial control systems that involve the integration of programmable logic controllers, intelligent devices and sensors.

New technologies and standards are emerging which will have a dramatic effect on the design and implementation of future industrial control systems. PLCs and PC-based soft controllers are beginning to use software components, for example function blocks, to business systems. New tools and techniques are needed to design and model these systems, such as UML and modern fieldbus technology. The IEC 61499 standard has been developed specifically to model distributed control systems. Practical tools based on IEC 61499 are likely to emerge soon to model, validate and simulate the behaviour of complex networks of function blocks and it is expected that this standard will become key to highly-developed distributed systems.