Requirements Engineering for Cyber Physical Production Systems

Traditional manufacturing and production systems are in the throes of a digital transformation. By blending the real and virtual production worlds, it is now possible to connect all parts of the production process: devices, products, processes, systems and people, in an informational ecosystem. This paper examines the underpinning issues that characterise the challenges for transforming traditional manufacturing to a Cyber Physical Production System. Such a transformation constitutes a major endeavour for requirements engineers who need to identify, specify and analyse the effects that a multitude of assets need to be transformed towards a network of collaborating devices, information sources, and human actors. The paper reports on the e-CORE approach which is a systematic, analytical and traceable approach to Requirements Engineering and demonstrates its utility using an industrial-size application. It also considers the effect of Cyber Physical Production Systems on future approaches to requirements in dealing with the dynamic nature of such systems.