Low-cost digitisation for Industry 4.0 session at SOHOMA’22

Call for papers for the Shoestring organised session at SOHOMA'22

** EXTENDED DEADLINE for submission of papers: 15 July 2022**

A group of researchers, led by Professor Duncan McFarlane and all part of the Shoestring team, are organising  a special session at the 12th International Workshop on Service Oriented, Holonic and Multi-Agent Manufacturing Systems for Industry of the Future – SOHOMA’22, to be held in Bucharest, Romania.

If your research looks at how simple, low-cost digital solutions or methodologies can benefit industry, or you have any motivating use-cases to share, submit a paper for the session by July 15th, 2022.

Important dates:

  • Full paper submission: 15 July, 2022
  • Notification of acceptance: 1 August, 2022
  • Workshop: 22-23 September, 2022

Session organised by:

  • Prof. Duncan McFarlane, IfM, University of Cambridge, U.K.
  • Dr. Anandarup Mukherjee, IfM, University of Cambridge, U.K. (am2910@cam.ac.uk )
  • Dr. German Terrazas Angulo, IfM, University of Cambridge, U.K. (gt401@cam.ac.uk )
  • Dr. Lavindra de Silva, IfM, University of Cambridge, U.K. (lpd25@cam.ac.uk )

About the Session

This special session explores the exciting trends found in the surge of adoption of low-cost digitisation technologies in small and medium industries/ enterprises (SMEs) globally.

Low-cost and low-risk digitisation technologies involving low-effort, low-price, and low-maintenance solutions are gaining momentum over industry-standard digitisation suites. Interestingly, many SMEs’ early digitisation needs can be captured by a limited set of solutions adapted across companies within an application domain (such as manufacturing) or across different application domains. These trends are visible across diverse manufacturing, construction, logistics, and healthcare industries. The low-cost technologies that comprise these solutions can be applied peripherally, in parallel to existing processes. They act as early motivators and enablers for providing digitisation to legacy industrial machinery and processes in SMEs. In the long run, they may also lead to large-scale adoption of digitisation technologies, helping transform SMEs into Industry 4.0 compliant companies.

Session objective

The goal of this session is to investigate how simple, one-off digital solutions or digitisation methodologies can be impactful across various application domains. Furthermore it will explore the limitations and the apparent advantages that these technologies offer besides their role in digitisation of infrastructure and processes. Motivating use-cases of similar efforts globally in academia and industries are equally welcome.

In the long run, this special session aims to lay the groundwork for standardising, validating, and defining the good practices and procedures for developing low-cost, low-risk digitisation solutions, primarily focusing on the applications in manufacturing, construction, logistics, and healthcare.

Scope of Session

Some of the topics of interest are listed below, however we invite other relevant works too:

  • Digital transformation,
  • Industry 4.0,
  • Sensor networks,
  • Edge and Fog computing for Industrial IoT,
  • Low-cost automation,
  • Intelligent Manufacturing Systems,
  • Smart Systems,
  • Multi-agent Systems
  • Holonic manufacturing systems
  • Sensors, Instrumentation and Actuators,
  • Condition Monitoring,
  • Image Processing, 
  • Industrial processes and Industry 4.0,
  • Smart Technology,
  • Software engineering,
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing
  • Mobile & Wireless Communications

Further information


If you have any queries, please email Anandarup Mukherjee – am2910@cam.ac.uk