The IO Toolkit Generator automates the development of components to interact with assets in the factory, both physical assets, like PLCs or sensors, and software assets, like ERP systems or proprietary file formats. The IO Toolkit generates a skeleton (or scaffold) of the component, just from few input parameters provided by the user to configure the generation process. Thus, the output of the IO Toolkit Generator is a working i4FS component that interconnects the platform to the specific manufacturing asset it has been designed for.
IO Toolkit Generator implements a templating framework where the main generator creates the code for the common functionalities to all components and each template controls the sub-generator producing the code which is specific to a particular implementation. Each template defines the dependencies needed to test and install the component, including the libraries within the IO Toolkit SDK (technology specific libraries provided by i4FS) that are needed to connect to a factory asset. Based on composability, templates can extend other templates to foster code reusability. Moreover, templates
can request additional input from the user so that the generated output is configured according to their needs. Depending on the requested input, the generated code can either be a component skeleton or a fully configured component. Since the code generation is fully automated, the few parameters needed can be provided by a human or a machine (ie another system to connect to an asset on the fly).