The real value in Industrial IoT is that it can provide a lot of insights and foresight from sensor data, real-time, at the edge that can then deliver new outcomes. Combining context can provide visibility on how assets and processes perform in manufacturing units. Leveraging real-time data can provide a true “what if” scenario to various stakeholders. This actionable intelligence can help reduce the cost of operation, Increase revenue by delivering new outcomes to customers, and increase efficiency and productivity.
Access to unprecedented volumes of data and the incurred valuable insights are critical factors for a competitive manufacturing business.
In the manufacturing environment, the integration to sensor data is not straightforward; however, Smart Manufacturing use cases demand real-time and historical sensor data generate meaningful analytics; Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications demand computing near the source of data generation. The Edge Platform capability will be the key to unlocking IoT benefits.
Edge IoT Platform enables latency-sensitive smart manufacturing use cases, offers greater business agility through better control and faster insights, lowers operating cost, and results in the faster return of investment from Smart Manufacturing.
Today, the Manufacturing industry leadership is excited about the potential of IoT, AI & ML technologies that would improve asset reliability and availability, Increase capacity utilization and improve yield.
In reality, when they start planning to move from Proof of Value project to enterprise-scale, they realize that the data required are in the various silos across multiple generation systems and each system has various hardware interfaces with different Industrial communication protocols, e.g., RS485/R232/Ethernet and old & new machine sensors require to connect.
It is critical to collect and integrate sensor data efficiently for a successful Smart Manufacturing project.
Typically, you require at least two to three various interfaces to collect data from the existing machine, e.g., energy meter on RS485, Sensors on 4-20 mA/0-10VDC, PLC/DAQ on Modbus TCP, etc.
In the current approach, PLC/RTU/DAQ and multiple communication protocol converters are used to collect data from machines. PLC/RTU are purpose-built hardware for machine control applications. Its architecture is not built for collecting sensor data using various Industry interfaces (RS485/RS232/4-20 mA/Zigbee/BLE) and Ingest Raw and Transformed data into application over GSM/GPRS/4G/Wi-Fi/NB IoT. Multiple communication protocol converters create a risk of multiple failure points and increase the risk of obsolescence.
The choice of Intelligent IoT Edge Platform is critical to producing successful Smart Manufacturing Business Outcomes.
Intelligent Edge IoT Platform designed for collecting sensor data at scale, transform data into actionable intelligence with the powerful onboard processor and high-level and general-purpose programming language, e.g., Python, Flowchart programming, etc.
Powerful Quad processor with modern microservice based architecture allows Edge AI/ML algorithms to transform data into actionable insight at Edge.
Edge Hardware provides computing resources closer to the edge to compile and filter data to alleviate bandwidth challenges. It pushes intelligence, data processing, analytics, and communication capabilities to where the data originates.
Leave a Reply