A trend in the industrial domain is that the networks are growing and becoming more complex, this is further accelerated by the digitalization trend. In order to address this, there is a need to improve the efficiency when moving between the R&D phases. For example, integrate innovative research findings into industrial systems, shorten time to market, improve product quality and reduce the number of issues. Despite a huge research effort on network simulators and emulators there are still some issues that needs to be addressed. This paper presents challenges that needs to be resolved, in order for the industry to adopt and benefit from using network simulators and emulators. The major challenges streamlining the workflow in and between the different R&D phases while preserving the real-time aspects in the entire industrial distributed control system.