Although the title of this paper may appear to be more than enough of an explanation of its contents, some aspects of the paper deserve a special mention.

The work described by the authors adds to the list of basic aspects that should be considered in the construction of any engineering product. These include the following: try to identify any faults the system may have as early on as possible during development, and facilitate getting users involved in the construction and validation of the system (without this amounting to an additional workload on their part).

Lee et al. bring the achievement of these objectives closer by presenting a method for verifying the real-time behavior of programmable logic controllers (PLCs), or identifying design and semantic failures in their construction. Their approach uses computer-based simulation through throwaway virtual prototypes. More specifically, the authors propose a domain-specific approach to developing virtual prototypes for PLC-based embedded systems. The intermediate steps in this approach are the construction of the virtual prototype, and the automated creation of state charts that represent the dynamic behavior of the PLC, and an object model of the target system. These intermediate products are integrated using the rapid tool to output the final prototype.

The paper supplies the formalized details of the algorithms used throughout the process, while also providing the corresponding high-level explications. This means that readers interested in a thorough examination of the question can find the details they need, while readers concerned only with gaining an understanding of the overall process can easily identify its essence without having to delve into precise details.