# Low-Cost Digitalization Solution through Scalable IIoT Prototypes
## 4 Case Study
### Measuring the Current State of the Factory  
The factory was not equipped with any Industry 4.0 technology on the shop floor, and extensive retrofitting was needed. As mentioned in Section 3, the automation pyramid was used to evaluate the current state of the factory to provide the functionality of lower layers. Implementation of the full stack would require extensive changes in factory operation and structure, and this was not the goal of this research. The solution that was implemented provided the possibility to include the upper layers at a later date when the decision-makers decide to make the step up. Therefore, the first three layers of the automation pyramid were implemented to digitize and visualize the broaching machine data. Figure 3a shows the broaching machine automation pyramid before and after IIoT enabling. The blue sections of the automation pyramid represent the IIoT-enabled layers.  
The broaching machine is represented by the following automation pyramid layers:  
* Field layer--This layer contains devices, actuators, and sensors in the field or production floor. The broaching machine was equipped with an analog pressure indicator (manometer), and the process was actuated locally via remote control with a couple of relays. It was impossible to use the manometer data because the manometer did not have the capability to transmit said data. Therefore, the analog manometer was re  
Figure 2: Hydraulic broaching: (**a**) Machine on the shop floor with mounted polypropylene tube to be broached; (**b**) Scheme of the working principle of the hydraulic broaching machine.  
placed with a digital pressure transmitter to gather the data and describe the behavior of the broaching machine, and thus, also the broaching tools.
* Control layer--This layer includes all programmable controllers in the field layer assets, such as Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) or Distributed Control System (DCS). The broaching machine did not benefit from any programmable elements; therefore, an IIoT edge device was embedded in the electrical cabinet to collect the data from the sensors in the Field layer and transmit the data to the upper layer.
* Supervision layer--This layer focuses on visualizing data collected from the control layer in various ways, such as control room screens, Human Machine Interface (HMI), and online dashboards. The ability of data visualization was provided thanks to the Zerynth cloud and the local internet network of the shop floor.
* Planning layer--or Manufacturing Execution System (MES) layer, has not yet been implemented in the factory.
* Management layer--or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) layer, has not yet been implemented in the company, aside from basic business software.  
The solution presented in this work did not entail direct changes to the Planning or Management layers, although the development of the layers was enabled by providing the data from the lower pyramid layers. The broaching machine control became possible because of the device management system that is part of the Cloud contained within the solution.  
Having in mind that the automation pyramid architecture is not suitable for the IIoT development, the solution in this work was based on a presented set of Technical Specifications (TS) presented by [PERSON] et al. [69], as shown in Figure 3b.