The Industrial Internet of Things’ true potential lies in the integration of diverse machines, information systems, operational processes and people. The IIoT will connect smart sensors, devices, machines and robots into a “digital nervous system” that will seamlessly interact with individuals and the physical world.
The value of IIoT systems and applications is very diverse in nature but leads to significant impacts, including:
- Managing and automating spare parts inventory and service delivery chains for maintenance processes vastly improving levels of service and responsiveness.
- Providing first-line maintenance, support staff, machine service technicians and other third party support personnel with complete access to a unified machine maintenance record that captures all of the machine’s performance data, history and knowledge about the status of the equipment, enabling faster and more effective maintenance processes.
- Analyzing the usage and history of production equipment against diverse data sources such as industry benchmarks, peak usage requirements or operator behaviors, optimizing its performance.
- Enabling entirely new services, leading to new lines of business, such as “security as a service,” where security and privacy for all industrial devices, machines, networks and data is provided as a managed service.
These are just a few examples of the opportunities IIoT systems open up for users. At the heart of these new capabilities lies a new class of core technology for industrial systems—the IIoT platform.