# Low-Cost Digitalization Solution through Scalable IIoT Prototypes
## 5 Discussion  
The digitalization process of small or medium enterprises, especially those with a traditional approach to their work, is complex since it involves not only the technical, but organizational and cultural aspects as well. The described application tries to engage the entrepreneur primarily, giving him/her a solid base to calculate the return value of the investment. Then, the target is the production manager deploying the digitalization as a means to supervise the machines and to provide better communication with the operators. The operators, in turn, promote and execute numerous improvements to the manufacturing process in collaboration with the production manager. A new culture of experiments and data analysis seems to be emerging in the company. Digital data recording is replacing manual monitoring for the first time, on the shop floor of the company. The engagement of key stakeholders in the industrial process improvement was the primary goal of this research, and there is evidence of a long-term commitment to the digital transformation of the factory floor. It is important to note that various experiments were performed by the factory production managers and operators, without an explicit request from the research team. The company changed the design of the broach, as previously mentioned, and has asked the research team to digitize another machine on the shop floor. The machine in question is the next in the manufacturing process chain, a hydraulic press that inserts a steel roll into the broached polypropylene tube. As the reader can understand, the new machine can be digitalized using the same hardware, sensors, and firmware as the previous one, thus reducing the cost of the twinning. This indicates that the Industry 4.0 principles are being integrated into the factory processes, as well as demonstrating the development of a data-driven approach, which was one of the goals of the solution. Figure 10: Gradual decline in the pressure during the first few hours of operation. The low cost of the solution is best reflected through the reduced installation and development cost, and especially in the easy transition between the prototype and the production-ready solution. This is the main benefit of this solution concept, as was shown in Section 3. The approximate cost of the entire hardware solution is cca USD 600, which is higher than that of the Arduino-based solution, but with the added benefit of using the same hardware for the production version of the solution. From a technical perspective, the broaching machine digitalization was executed in a fast and smooth way, thanks to the Zerynth environment. The researchers were able to quickly install the hardware and acquire the data. The entire development, testing, and installation process was completed in 6 days with the installation, and therefore, the break of operation lasted only one day. It is important to note here that the open libraries and standards used in the digitization process greatly reduced its complexity, and therefore improved the development speed. The entrepreneur especially appreciated the rapid setup and the fact that the prototype immediately started providing machine data. Data visualization was paramount in helping the entrepreneur, as well as the production manager, to gain valuable insights from the acquired data. It also enabled an immediate analysis and an improvement of the broaching tool, as well as the broaching process in general. These results lead to new requests for the digitalization of other machines in the production line, thus demonstrating the positive impact of the entire process. Of course, the retrofitting of the machine was made easy by the simple architecture of the broaching machine, and a more complex system could require additional efforts. Furthermore, since the requirements in Section 1 have been elaborated to address the needs collected in manufacturing SMEs, the described solution could fulfill other SMEs with the same goal of digitalization and similar electromechanical machines.