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 the evolution aspects not covered by the PPU case study until now, an extension on requirements, fault handling and parallel evolution is exemplarily presented. While carving out essential aspects of these topics, various challenges were identified that conclude this article.