Patent ID: 8347283

Claim:
A method for automatic installation and maintenance of hardware and/or software in the system nodes of a process control system that includes a system maintenance tool, the method comprising: activating the system maintenance tool from any system node of the process control system; selecting a software package and/or a functional component via the system maintenance tool, wherein the selected software package and/or the selected functional component are elements of predefined life cycle arrangement activities; executing automatically maintenance steps of the selected software package and/or of the selected functional component with regard to the distribution, installation and/or configuration of the software package and/or of the selected functional component in a defined sequence on the system nodes of the process control system; testing the installation and configuration of the software packages and/or functional components to assess whether they are fully implemented on the individual system nodes of the distributed system, and/or testing interdependencies of the software packages and/or functional components between the system nodes of the distributed system; and creating a system status report comprising an indication of a status of the tested installation and configuration and/or an indication of a status of the tested interdependencies.