What Do IIoT Solutions Look Like?

Summary

For those in the manufacturing industry, the constant pursuit of greater throughput, higher quality and reduced cost is a familiar challenge, as these factors drive competitiveness. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a term gaining traction in this context. It refers to a network of interconnected devices, sensors and software that can collect and exchange data, offering potential solutions to these challenges. But how does one begin to navigate the world of IIoT?

While still considered bleeding edge by most manufacturers, the idea of a quick return on your investment and pinpointing a solution to a specific problem can be very appealing.  Vendors are delivering more and more solutions of this type by providing an architecture that can publish data to a cloud and leverage APPs to view and analyze the data and act based on its results. They promise to have standard, efficient solutions for user management and cyber security paired with a promise of easy installation and quick ROI.

In the early days, these systems integrated key technologies that showed promise for Internet-based architectures. For communication to your corporate edge, standard technologies such as MQTT and OPC UA offer data-publishing capabilities to custom applications written for cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS. Many tools are available to facilitate these architectures that leverage standards for communications, security and application development. This ensures that custom solutions, usually implemented and maintained by local System Integrators, will deliver value, reliably and securely. Although the solution may put an organization at the leading edge of technology and solve a problem with a purpose-built solution, it may result in higher initial project costs and costs associated with long-term maintenance.

Initial custom applications have proven their value, validated a new market and paved the way for new vendors to deliver canned solutions to solve problems. Examples of these canned solutions include energy monitoring, vibration monitoring, downtime and OEE monitoring and more. Today, purpose-built solutions are available, quick and easy to implement, require very little maintenance and are extremely cost-effective. While it may not be a complete solution for all your needs, these point solutions will enable you to solve many problems, one at a time. 

Whereas solutions were created and maintained by your local integrator in the past, today, you can purchase various components to collect data and enable a monthly service to deliver analytics from that data. It's likely that your IT professional will know how to install and provision the data collection, and the associated services will come as an operating expense rather than a capital expense.

Solution architectures vary greatly, from IIoT-enabled sensors to edge devices that communicate with your equipment to collect and publish data. In some cases, data is published directly to a mobile or online application that delivers your view and analytics. In other cases, data is sent to an on-premise, third-party hosted, or cloud-hosted data repository and results are shared with you through a value-added APP service. But in all these cases, standard and proven technologies are leveraged for data connectivity and cyber security.

In conclusion, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) presents a wealth of opportunities for manufacturing companies to improve their operations and competitiveness. By leveraging standard and proven technologies for data connectivity and cyber security, IIoT solutions can address specific needs and provide cost-effective, easy-to-implement solutions. As IIoT continues to evolve, it is essential for businesses to overcome common misconceptions and embrace the potential of this technology to drive growth and innovation in the manufacturing industry.