Industrial Internet Of Things(IIoT)

The industrial internet of things (IIoT) is the interconnected system of smart sensors, actuators and other instruments that holds the potential of smart machines contributing to the manufacturing and industrial processes.

Overview

Modern world is growing insane any day. It was not a long back when the crazy curious thoughts of people were doomed to be illogical and impractical. And now, each such stuff is being praised and turned to realistic. Our think tank has grown much bigger. The incalculable human conduct of desire and enthusiasm has initiated a remarkable and miraculous enhancements throughout. All the gains and brilliance achieved till date has always served as a boon in the race. Nevertheless(still), technology is always a standard and proven finding of the mankind. The raise in our life quality significantly in every possible term is the outcome of our technological superbness. Prior to the start till the end of our life, we are so much favored by technology that we can term ourselves as ‘lifeless’ in its absence. Out of the many such things, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been the one of the most precious things lately where information technology and operational technology simultaneously work for the better industrial and manufactural outcomes.

It has the sharp edge over the conventionally manufacturing machine systems in automation and mitigating the errors that can lead to the failure of machines due to inaccurate human collection, interpretation, delivery and analyzation of data saving a whole of time, money and business integrity. Real time data analytics from the sensors and other information with the ease of machine to machine[M2M] communication helps in perfect automated decision making.

IIoT is often referred to as industry 4.0 and is way more than just manufacturing. Estimation is done that that about 50 billion devices will use IIoT and market value will reach $225 billion by 2020. It has been realized that within 3-4 months of implementation, manufacturing units have improved their overall equipment efficiency by 24%, reduced the product defects by 16%, increased labor utilization by 12 points, and increased the production line output by 10%. [1] But IIoT is not only limited to the connection of the industrial products/machines to the digital access or automation but also the behavioral, operational and business model needs and importance along with the customer satisfaction are much prominent.

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Architecture

The interconnected systems of these large number of devices obviously needs a better execution structure. Different manufactural industry may have slightly different architecture based upon the types of machines setup, communication procedures, safety, security, privacy and availability of proper resources.

A general working architecture of IIoT is shown above which has basically 4 different tiers. The data sources are the sensed information by the smart devices connected to the industrial systems. The edge gateway eases the task of gathering and filtering the data from the data sources and send the aggregates forward. Cloud Gateway is a core IoT platform capable of handling massive amounts of data with data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence abilities. Its core capabilities include, but are not limited to, device management and stream analytics including complex events processing, rules engine, alerts and notifications, big data and machine learning capabilities, and other vital platform services such as authentication, multitenancy, end-to-end security, scheduling engine, SDKs, and platform APIs. Lastly, a library of backend IT system integrators to ensure machine data is fed into key IT systems to complete the circle of operations.

Findings

Improved services with adequately happy customers alongside financial benefits are the ultimate goals of a business. For any such large investment transformation that is still undergoing building phase, the positiveness coming out of it is crucious for its better implementation. The core advantage is the M2M communication with real time data analysis for reaching out to the machine fault and system failures before any life-threatening risky situation occurs or results to the unexpected faulty designs/products, ultimately saving billions of money.

IIoT is used extensively at transportation, medical, energy, oil and gas and manufacturing industries. For instances: Different sensors are being used in case of finding and replacement of parts of industrial robotic arms, especially in the bigger industries like automobiles and energy sector. As of now, jetliner airbus companies have initiated a digital manufacturing initiative to streamline operations and boost production. Airbus has integrated sensors into machines and tools on the shop floor and outfitted employees with wearable tech, e.g., industrial smart glasses, aimed at cutting down on errors and enhancing workplace safety. Similarly, robot manufacturing companies around the globe have started to use different integrated smart sensors in order to check the defects in them against the expected. Also, automobiles manufacturing companies in Americas and Europe have started to track down the vehicles and monitor its parts condition and alert the owner time and again to repair it.[2]

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IIoT serves as a new vision for the business endeavors that focuses on efficient automation and customers satisfactions. Transparency and quality control rates are immense with IIoT. Recently this technology is used in emptying only those wastage containers that are full where data is sensed and monitored from the office and necessary alarms are sent to the human resources that lessens the unnecessary driving to check litters around the cities. Global GDP has started to swung up already with these revolutionary services. At overall, an entirely new and improved products and service methods are innovated.

It will not be logical to even imagine a total safe, sound and heroics service from a system where billions and trillions of devices are mustered with each other. There are several risks associated among which the security threat majors where customers data may be manipulated by the other unauthorized persons (hacking/data breaches). Gartner (research and advertising company) estimates that by 2020, more than 25% of recognized attacks on enterprises will involve IoT-connected systems, despite its accounting for less than 10% of IT security budgets.[3] Also there might occur the software crash that may disrupt the routine service leading to an unfavorable commenting with the customers.

Industrial internet is the leading business material in the near future forcing a huge economic revolution. Global companies making a rapid and increasing use of this technology are growing vividly where most of them are under pilot production phases. Bigger companies are already a pro game players in this revolt. A bigger leap in the field of software making in the past decade has broken the barrier of traditional industries to reach the smart automation. If there exists some better encouragement plans from the concerned authority to the industries who wants to go with this flow, automation with perfection will be ruling the world within a short period of time.