Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
Through IIoT-enabled technologies and strategies, industrial users can collect and store data from almost anything at an extremely high frequency and incredibly low cost. This enables efficiencies in work and business processes that were not possible in the past.
Distributed control systems (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) with process historians have been performing some elements of this for decades. While they still deal with sensors and computing, IIoT-enabled solutions can deliver very different outcomes than DCS- and PLC-based process automation architectures alone.
Historically, process automation systems have been designed for a single purpose; to support process control based on the process design characteristics as spelled out on the process & instrumentation design (P&ID) diagrams. Sensors and actuators (valves, pumps, drives, etc.) included in a front-end engineering design (FEED) process were almost always expected to be connected to DCS or PLC I/O to support process control, logic, and alert operators via a human machine interface (HMI).
For Industrial IoT, both the architecture and expected outcomes are very different. Process automation also follows the Purdue Model for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (circa 1980) and the ISA95 Model for Enterprise-Control System Integration. The most notable difference between the two architectures is that the ISA95 model focuses on feeding plant data up to the enterprise while IIoT can extend out to suppliers, customers, and partners to enable new business models and processes.
...... and of course the very nature of the enterprise is changing.
A number of industry groups and consortiums are working on IIoT architecture. A sample of these industry efforts include:
Internet of Things-A Group
Industrial Internet Consortium
ISO IEC
I think this is a disruptive change that will deeply impact industrial automation. What do you think?
Distributed control systems (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) with process historians have been performing some elements of this for decades. While they still deal with sensors and computing, IIoT-enabled solutions can deliver very different outcomes than DCS- and PLC-based process automation architectures alone.
Historically, process automation systems have been designed for a single purpose; to support process control based on the process design characteristics as spelled out on the process & instrumentation design (P&ID) diagrams. Sensors and actuators (valves, pumps, drives, etc.) included in a front-end engineering design (FEED) process were almost always expected to be connected to DCS or PLC I/O to support process control, logic, and alert operators via a human machine interface (HMI).
For Industrial IoT, both the architecture and expected outcomes are very different. Process automation also follows the Purdue Model for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (circa 1980) and the ISA95 Model for Enterprise-Control System Integration. The most notable difference between the two architectures is that the ISA95 model focuses on feeding plant data up to the enterprise while IIoT can extend out to suppliers, customers, and partners to enable new business models and processes.
...... and of course the very nature of the enterprise is changing.
A number of industry groups and consortiums are working on IIoT architecture. A sample of these industry efforts include:
Internet of Things-A Group
Industrial Internet Consortium
ISO IEC
I think this is a disruptive change that will deeply impact industrial automation. What do you think?