This article is reprinted with permission from the WeChat public account “CSDN” (ID: CSDNnews)
Even in the post-industrial era, industry remains the largest demander and consumer of technological advances. According to IDC Research, in 2018, the manufacturing sector invested $189 billion in technology R&D, far exceeding the transportation sector ($85 billion) and utilities ($73 billion), with IoT technology investments amounting to $62 billion.
Bain & Company predicts that by 2020, applications of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will generate a market exceeding $300 billion, while the consumer IoT sector will reach $150 billion.
This enormous market share has led many companies to claim they are applying IIoT in their everyday promotions. So, what are the differences between IIoT and other types of IoT? Let’s take a look at today’s article.
Author | Sciforce
Translator | Hu Shuo
Editor | Hu Weiwei
Produced by | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
Differences Between Industrial IoT and Other Types of IoT
Currently, IoT applications have connected machines and equipment in industries such as oil and gas, utilities, and manufacturing.
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Like other types of IoT, IIoT fundamentally uses sensors to collect data, which, when processed, can help accelerate production processes, improve industry efficiency, and ultimately reduce the overall costs of products or services. However, there are certain features that distinctly differentiate IIoT from other IoT applications:
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The hardware, software, and protocols used in the industrial internet are different from what we are accustomed to at the enterprise or consumer level. You may have never heard of protocols like OPC, MQTT, DDS, or AMQP or platforms like SCADA and MES; these are commonly used in the industrial internet, and if you are not in this industry, you may never have heard of them. The task of IIoT is to connect industrial devices with enterprise-level applications and utilize established data storage mechanisms to store data on the platform. To some extent, IIoT merges industrial IT and enterprise IT;
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The physical environment that IIoT devices connect to can vary greatly, with these devices potentially being deployed in factories, mines, and substations, locations that have not had any network operations for decades. Installing sensors in such harsh conditions is quite challenging;
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Compared to other types of IoT, IIoT focuses more on improving efficiency, environmental protection, and safety.
There are currently over 450 IIoT platforms, but there is no clear definition of what constitutes an IIoT platform. What capabilities should an IIoT platform possess is a question worth exploring.
Trends in the Development of Industrial IoT
After comparing IIoT platform providers and clusters of suppliers, Frost & Sullivan published the main trends in IIoT development in January 2018:
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Tendency towards self-service models, shifting API modules to the center of IIoT strategies;
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Open cloud developer platforms focusing on collaboration between IIoT experts and internal software developers, potentially accelerating customer proof-of-concept modeling;
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Satellite-based LPWAN technology, which is expected to surpass cellular network technologies like LTE-M and NB-IoT, and can enhance IoT use cases for global asset tracking in sectors like oil and gas;
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AI engines and cognitive capabilities, which will become key elements of IIoT platforms, primarily due to competitive differentiation and better performance demands;
However, these so-called capabilities seem overly broad and could apply to all IoT fields. So, what characteristics should an industrial IoT platform possess? First, let’s look at the general characteristics of IoT platforms:
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Device Management
In terms of device management, the number of connected devices can reach hundreds of thousands, and in some industries, they may be spread over vast areas. Once so many devices are deployed, manually maintaining them becomes very costly. For this reason, IoT platforms with complete device management functions will enable enterprises to centrally manage all IoT devices through a single panel.
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Device Communication Management
Connecting more devices typically means more data needs to be transmitted; however, the risk of communication congestion increases due to connection instability and the different sources and types of connected devices. From this perspective, IoT platforms should meet the following requirements:
In addition to the features that most IoT platforms possess, IIoT systems also have many specific characteristics in the industrial field:
1. Data Collection and Analysis: IIoT deployments have unique characteristics in terms of data management and scale. The types of data used, collection methods, and analyses may come from sensors and software deployed in highly complex and customized machines.
2. Challenging Environments: In many cases, sensors and other sensitive network devices used for IIoT are mostly deployed in harsh environments, including high temperatures, extreme cold, high humidity, and poorly ventilated conditions, which require special IoT sensors and network hardware.
3. Quality Control: One of the key characteristics of IIoT is that most of the data collected involves automated quality control processes.
4. Improving Efficiency: Enhancing energy efficiency is one of the key tasks of IIoT, which involves implementing and collecting smart sensor data in HVAC and lighting systems, integrating AI into factory equipment to keep it operating at optimal levels, and modernizing factories in targeted ways to improve energy efficiency.
5. Enhancing Supply Chain Visibility: Many IIoT projects aim to provide end-to-end supply chain visibility to avoid the typical blind spots of supply chains equipped with built-in digital silos.
6. Retrofitting Equipment: IIoT projects often involve retrofitting industrial equipment using IoT sensors, including manufacturing equipment, forklifts, and storage containers. Most of these projects require updating legacy processes and tools to fully integrate into the IIoT world.
Therefore, to provide a viable IIoT platform, vendors and developers should ensure modularity, interoperability, and an open approach based on supporting cloud service providers, and provide an evolving IIoT platform.
Although the IoT platform market is far from mature, and not all vendors strictly offer IIoT solutions, there are still some innovators paving the way for Industry 4.0.
This article is reprinted from the WeChat public account “CSDN” (ID: CSDNnews)
Original link: https://medium.com/sciforce/how-to-recognize-industrial-internet-of-things-f27ccae1ac69