Our (Hafiyyan Sayyid Fadhlillah, Bianca Wiesmayr, Michael Oberlehner, Rick Rabiser, Alois Zoitl) paper "Towards Delta-Oriented Variability Modeling for IEC 61499" was accepted at the ETFA (Int'l Conf. on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation) 2021 WiP track. In this paper, we propose an approach to manage variability in IEC 61499-based systems using delta-oriented variability modeling. We discuss open challenges and outline a research agenda for variability management in IEC 61499.

Our (Lisa Sonnleithner, Sándor Bácsi, Michael Oberlehner, Elene Kutsia, Alois Zoitl) paper "Do you smell it too? Towards IEC 61499 Bad Smells". has been accepted at the ETFA (Int'l Conf. on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation) 2021 in the WiP track. In this paper we present our work towards dealing with "code smells" in IEC 61499.

Our (Lisa Sonnleithner, Bianca Wiesmayr, Virendra Ashiwal, Alois Zoitl) paper "IEC 61499 Distributed Design Patterns" has been accepted at the ETFA (Int'l Conf. on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation) 2021. In this paper we describe our work on Design Patterns for IEC 61499.

Our (Bianca Wiesmayr, Alois Zoitl, Rick Rabiser) paper "Assessing the Usefulness of a Visual Programming IDE for Large-Scale Automation Software" was just accepted at the ACM/IEEE 24th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS) Practice & Innovation Track. We describe a user study involving ten industrial automation engineers, who used Eclipse 4diac IDE in a realistic control software maintenance scenario. We discuss lessons learned and derive general implications applicable in the context of (visual) model-based engineering tools.

Our (Antonio Gutierrez, Lisa Sonnleithner, Alois Zoitl, Rick Rabiser) paper "Ansätze zur Beherrschung der Variabilität in Software-intensiven Cyber-Physischen Produktionssystemen" (German) was accepted in the Journal e & i Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik. In this paper we describe the challenges of variability management in cyber-physical production systems, that we want to address in our CD lab.