The level of automation and system complexity in factories and plants increases steadily which results in difficult and less-productive system engineering. Therefore, the main target of the MEDEIA project is to radically improve the development productivity of embedded control systems for the European industrial automation sector. The project results will reduce their system design time by 25%, which will be reached by the following objectives: 1) Formal framework for model-driven component-based development of embedded control, 2) Easy understandable modelling method applicable for domain experts, 3) Integrated modelling of diagnostics, 4) Integrated simulation and verification of systems design, 5) Automatic, embedded platform specific code-generation for the deployment of control software to heterogeneous hardware and 6) Proof–of-concept demonstration. The European industrial automation industry will benefit from the MEDEIA results. The project will be applicable for this sector and it will support them with a powerful method to design and maintain long operational installations as well as automation solutions with rapidly changing demands. To ensure a wide usage of the project results it is planned to standardize the MEDEIA method and to provide an open source design tool. Project results will improve the competitiveness of European companies through increased productivity of system development by the provision of a novel model-driven design method for embedded control and diagnostics using Automation Components as major design part. Furthermore, such results will reinforce the European scientific and technological leadership.A major factor for successful projects especially for transnational projects is the project team. Therefore the project partners are selected according to the different levels of knowledge needed within the value creation chain in industrial automation to ensure a holistic view onto the topic, and they can guarantee excellent results.