Small and medium sized businesses within mechanical manufacturing cannot benefit from Industry 4.0 automation as small production batches are unable to pay for up-front robotic configuration and programming costs.In this paper, we report on early results from a project aiming at developing a software architecture supporting fast, easy, and flexible reconfiguration of a robotic manufacturing process, using an agile and prototyping approach.

Software companies are increasingly adopting DevOps and continuous software engineering practices to support short feedback loops, gain better control and visibility over deployments, and decrease the need for manual work with the help of automated processes. While adopting DevOps practices can lead to various benefits, companies also face many kinds of challenges in the transition. This short paper presents the results of a case study conducted in a large Danish software service house about their experiences of transitioning towards DevOps. We got 30 completed survey responses and interviewed four persons in software engineering related roles. We present the current state of the company with challenges and suggestions to improvement. To reach DevOps, the company will need a major cultural change. However, the respondents were positive that the adoption of continuous software engineering practices would mitigate some of their prevailing challenges.