Retrofitting of legacy machines in the context of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

Abstract

In the context of Industry 4.0 (I 4.0), one of the most important aspects is data, followed by the capital required to deploy advanced technologies. However, most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are neither data ready nor have the capital to upgrade their existing machinery. In SMEs, most of the legacy machines do not have data gathering capabilities. In this scenario, the concept of retrofitting the existing machinery with sensors and building an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is more beneficial than upgrading the equipment to newer machinery. The current research paper proposes a simple architecture on retrofitting a legacy machine with external sensors for data collection and feeding the cloud-based databases for analysis/monitoring purposes. The design and functional aspects of the architecture are then tested in a laboratory environment on a drilling machine with no embedded sensors. Data related to the speed of the drill head and the bore depth are collected using newly retrofitted sensors to validate the proposed architecture.