Development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) requires various engineering disciplines, artifacts, and areas of expertise to collaborate. There are powerful software tools, which are used during CPS development, but it is often challenging to integrate these tools with each other. This paper proposes a data visualization approach to understanding current interoperability status and the integration needs in CPS development toolchains, and make decisions on potential integration scenarios accordingly. To this end, a case study is introduced based on a toolchain for the development of an embedded application at ABB Corporate Research. The node-link diagram (NLD) data visualization technique was used to understand integration needs and priorities. The study showed that the NLD visualization has the potential to inform toolchain architects about the interoperability situation and help them to make decisions accordingly, especially for small toolchains. Moreover, the integration solution is implemented and the result has been compared with the non-integration study.
QC 20170626