## 8 Conclusions  
In conclusion, it can be stated that three educational studies have been created, which will be the basis for the creation of pilot courses for Industry 4.0 education. Their nature is to explain to the participants the convergence of information and operational technologies using practical examples. The case studies focus on the monitoring and control of virtual manufacturing systems, using two types of PLC runtimes, Node-RED flow-oriented programming tool, and cloud technologies.  
The application benefits of the article can be summarised in the following points:  
* **Modelling and control of virtual discrete-event system** A virtual model of a production discrete-event system was created within the work, which was inspired by a real model available at the Institute of Automotive Mechatronics FEI STU in Bratislava, Slovakia. The control programs were created using ladder diagrams and were implemented using two development environments--OpenPLC and CODESYS.
* **Design and implementation of cloud applications** Two cloud-based applications were designed and implemented for monitoring and emergency intervention of the production discrete-event system. The cloud applications were implemented in different ways. In the first case, the aPaaS service Azure IoT Central was used and in the second case, the IaaS service Azure Virtual Machine was used. This is an Ubuntu Linux based virtual machine where a dashboard (graphical user interface) created using Node-RED was deployed.
* **Implementation of a software IIoT gateway applicable for edge computing** In the last case study, it was necessary to encapsulate data arriving via the Modbus protocol in the address space of OPC UA. This is commonly handled using hardware IIoT gateways or similar network elements. However, our solution is to implement a software IIoT gateway using the flow-oriented programming tool Node-RED, and this type of application can also be implemented in affordable microcomputers (e.g., Raspberry Pi). We can then place such a microcomputer at the edge of the network as an edge device.  
* **Creation of the basis for pilot projects for the creation of educational materials for the training of engineers for Industry 4.0--pilot Engineer 4.0 programmes** The nature of the prepared case studies, which combine operational and information technologies, predestines them to be used in the sphere of the education of engineers for the digitalisation of production processes.  
In conclusion, the results are beneficial and can be further modified for the development of educational materials and technical practice in Industry 4.0.  
[PERSON] proposed the idea in this paper and prepared the software application; [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] designed the experiments, [PERSON] and [PERSON] performed the experiments; [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] analysed the data; [PERSON] wrote the paper; [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] edited and reviewed the paper; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the Slovak research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-21-0125, by the Cultural and Educational Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic KEGA 016 STU-4/2020 and 039 STU-4/2021, by the Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic No. 1/0107/22.  
Not applicable.  
We would like to thank to [PERSON] for helping with programming the implementation.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.