The development of automation production systems (aPS) is an ongoing task characterized by incremental changes to evolve the system to adapt to the increasingly volatile requirements and technological changes. Insuring a high quality for the system undergoing developmental changes is indispensable in the field of automation systems. The identification of possible faults that may arise due to intended or unintended changes to the aPS as well as their effect on quality can help in avoiding system failures and maintaining the desired performance. Towards this objective, taxonomy of aPS faults is proposed and used to derive possible influences on the different aspects of the system quality. This taxonomy adopts a comprehensive viewpoint by considering physical as well as human faults occurring throughout the entire aPS life cycle. The feasibility of the proposed taxonomy is demonstrated based on an aPS lab size demonstrator and by considering different fault scenarios.
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