What is an Industrial IoT (IIoT) Platform? Benefits, Cautions, and More

Manufacturers need to easily access data from their production processes to take advantage of the new inroads available with Industry 4.0. Driven by the need to identify, analyze, and optimize industrial data, many manufacturers are considering (or have already adopted!) an Industrial Internet of Things platform to leverage the power of Machine Learning, AI, and Big Data discoveries.

Digital transformation is on all manufacturers’ minds as they aim to navigate the challenges today and in the future. With access to data limited, the appeal of an Industrial Internet of Things platform is catching many organizations’ attention.

An Industrial IoT platform (IIoT Platform) aggregates real-time data from hardware, software systems, sensors, and other data points into a centralized environment, which can usually be accessed by a wide group of users. It bridges the gap between systems, people, and machines by pulling that data into a centralized system, usually in a cloud, but sometimes also on-prem or on edge.

IIoT platforms are used for decision-making in industrial environments by improving connectivity, control, forecasting, and data analysis. Manufacturers typically seek an IIoT platform when they are looking to gain insights into the factors that impact quality control, downtime, production (output), and waste. Additionally, an IIoT platform is often used to bring visibility cross-departmentally into what’s going on in your facility.

Benefits of an Industrial IoT Platform

There are many benefits to adopting an IIoT Platform—some of which are easy to measure and some that offer more of a soft ROI. First and foremost, an Industrial IoT platform will bring together data from various siloed production systems like Historians, SCADAs, PLCs, LIMS, and more, into a centralized location or hub. This provides a holistic view of everything from raw materials to finished products and every variable in between.

You can tap into applications containing algorithms, models, and more to better understand the data, or integrate third-party systems. With better access to all of your data, you can begin to make comparisons between top-performing plants and underperforming plants and get a better holistic view of your operations. It can feel like a big win to achieve this!

Words of Caution with Industrial IoT Platform Vendors

With an Industrial IoT platform, you’re aggregating together raw data from a range of sources. However, there will likely be a need to either cleanse that data manually or tap into another software, algorithm, or specialist to make the data usable. Data analysis takes time and requires specific skills such as Python expertise or deep data mining skills—and can still leave many findings left to individual interpretation and bias.

When choosing an IIoT platform, evaluate the vendor’s platform features, services, and processes to ensure they align with your business objectives.

You can remain stuck in the reactive state of “what happened when?” if you don’t have the right data cleansed for your use. For example, you could be asking yourself what happened in the hours, minutes, or days before your boiler malfunctioned? Sure, you have the historical data in your IIoT platform that you can then extract and troubleshoot, but by the time you may find the Root Cause Analysis, you may get pulled into another fire. Ready-to-use applications to visualize, analyze, and uncover insights from your data speed up this process so you can get back to peak operations.

Further, if you have limited visibility into time-based data, you will still be left guessing. Contextualized data from a manufacturing Digital Twin of your process will link operating data to a specific period of time that the boiler malfunctioned. What if it was actually a valve that caused the malfunction upstream? A Digital Twin can help you isolate variables in a way to see how they are interrelated to not just determine what happened when, but rather how can we prevent this instance from recurring?

The Power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IIoT

To truly transform your operations, there is an opportunity even beyond an IIoT platform in the form of AI. The human mind can interpret a set number of variables, which can be limiting, yet AI can help drastically scale the breadth and depth of analysis. Even the best data scientists may only be able to interrelate 60 or so variables, while AI can have endless possibilities.  

Though not all AI is created equal and there are several cautions to consider when choosing the ‘right’ AI, in the midst of a changing workforce, AI may be more important than ever before: especially when humans drive the AI, and not the other way around. The human element—almost completely absent in Industry 3.0 strategies—is the cornerstone of today’s digital transformation to Industry 4.0.

The next 4.0 production systems are autonomous cyber-physical systems. Cyber-physical systems enable intelligent machines to learn about our human environment while simultaneously providing humans with a higher quality of life. These systems “integrate sensing, computation, control, and networking into physical objects and infrastructure, connecting them to the Internet and to each other” (National Science Foundation). 

AI technology, deep data analysis, and a connected IIoT platform offer tools to empower your employees to solve the complex challenges hindering your business.