Challenges of parallel evolution in production automation focusing on requirements specification and fault handling

Evaluating research approaches in production automation can be cost- and time-intensive. Motivated by this challenge, the role of a case study which is open to the research community is discussed at first and recent developments towards an open case study, the Pick & Place Unit (PPU), are presented. Based on evolution aspects not covered by the PPU case study until now, an extension on requirements, fault handling and parallel evolution are presented as an example. While carving out essential aspects of these topics, various challenges were identified that conclude this article.