IIoT: Innovation That Brings Everything together

IIoT, short for Industrial Internet of Things, is specifically designed for the description of IoT in the field of industrialization. IIoT is otherwise known as Factory 4.0 and Industrial IoT. It is essentially a kind of technical support for M2M (Machine to machine) where everything is united and works together for one goal. IIoT combines hardware and software together to form an ideal cloud for industrial purposes.

What is IIoT

The hardware part of IIoT includes variety of equipment to help business smoother and more efficient. Many of them have already been adopted into the field and earns great reputation. Common ones are sensors, industrial camera and computer, light sources, collective robotic arms and many more. The hardware equipment is the foundation of IIoT. Through all advanced technologies, hardware equipment has two basic utilities: gather information and execute demands.

The major solution for information acquirement is machine vision. The system consists of a whole set including industrial computer, light source, industrial camera, lens and light source. Machine vision is able to acquire images in industrial environment with high precision and high quality which is crucial to the next step: analyzing the images. In certain cases, the only way of analyzing is by reading the information of images on pixel level.

If hardware is the arms and legs of the whole IIoT system, then software is the brain behind it. Only with algorithm developed by professionals can IIoT actually functions. Analyzing and storing data in most cases depend on algorithms.

Another significant factor of IIoT is that the data-generation of cloud. We’ve all well-received the idea of cloud-storing. In the field of IIoT, cloud is a more advanced level of IIoT. With the power of cloud, we can actually have an industrial world where everything is united and glued together. Image taking care of your business with the most efficiency and minimum cost. Each and every detailed data you need in a factory or an assembly line can be found within a second. You can put 100% of your stigma into how to manage and improve your business without worrying about basic sundries.

Advantages of current IIoT

Nowadays, many industries have adopted IIoT into the manufacturing process. All one needs to achieve it is the prepared set of hardware and updating your current software. With the help of IIoT, one can easily acquire the following advantages:

• Sensing and monitoring manufacturing process:

The core strength of IIoT is that it’s able to handle continuous communication in order to optimize capacity in certain industrial environment such as warehouses and assembly lines and monitor the whole process real-time to make sure you have the enough time to pin down the problems and fix them.

• Optimizing current process:

A sensor and an IIoT platform can easily monitoring the process for future optimization including the parts, equipment and work-flow such as the machine performance, supply chain and quality assurance.

• Optimizing product quality:

IIoT is able to monitor and fix any issues in assembly lines. With everything united clearly, it can significantly reduce the time-out and target defects of products.

• Improving working process:

Since all the important data is collected in a cloud, the working process is much more straight-lined and clear by reducing unnecessary communication cost and even achieve the level of cross-analyzing by industrial computers sharing one database.

• Power management for sustainability

Industrial manufacturing consumes 54% of the world's electricity. Manufacturers using IIoT can significantly improve energy efficiency by optimizing energy consumption.

Challenges of IIoT

As a promising direction, IIoT has gained lots of attention. Yet it still needs to overcome some difficulties before it takes off and drives us into a better future.

• Tighter network

Because IIoT systems are often large and complex, they integrate end-to-end process control and management. Communication and specification at all levels is essential. Therefore, at present, it is limited to specific areas such as local wireless communication, which makes the specification manageable and understandable.

• More security challenge

Because IIoT typically connects previously rather isolated devices and services to the cloud. In many cases, there is a gap between unconnected devices and the enterprise network or Internet. Most frameworks or protocols incorporate one or more security features, such as encrypting communication links when authenticating data or commands. Some frameworks even support security policies and other safety and security management. The problem is that IIoT can contain multiple frameworks and protocols with different security capabilities and management approaches, which complicates the situation and can lead to configuration errors that can further lead to security vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

With that being said, it seems inevitably to develop IIoT in the future along with the speeding up of globalization. SmartMoreInside provides all kinds of acquired hardware and advanced algorithms to cooperate with it. By keeping our mission in mind, we’re building a smarter future to ease the manufacturing and workload of mankind.