Making Industry 4.0 a Reality Connectivity

What if you could get notified of issues on your manufacturing line as quickly and easily as you get notified of a new text message? Today, the digitalization of the manufacturing industry is the fourth industrial revolution (also known as Industry 4.0). With the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) at our fingertips, these immediate notifications, and much more, is possible for companies around the world.

A key building block of Industry 4.0 is leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect and monitor assets. But initially getting machines connected can face some barriers, such as

• Aging Infrastructure – Many factories have legacy systems as well as disparate machine types
• Limited Compute Power – Systems processing power can be weak or there is a lack of infrastructure in general
• Multiple Locations – Many companies plants are scattered all over with different processes and data stored in each one

But how do organizations get started with connectivity?

• Cloud – The benefits of the cloud far outweigh the risks. It allows us to get very good transparency over a broad set of operational environments.
• Factory – There are devices now available to enhance the ability to upload information and get information from the cloud quickly and efficiently. It can also be stored locally.
• Field – Connectivity at the edge in the field, on the factory floor, or an individual looking at new equipment to bring into the current environment.

The consistent set of connectivity working through the three layers mentioned above is what the Industrial IoT is solving as part of its delivery.

From here, an organization can climb up the chain to get to transformational impact. Successful IoT implementations tend to build on themselves, like a snowball rolling down a mountain. First, an organization will start tagging and connecting their assets for monitoring. Then, when the benefits of that simple implementation are seen, they can think of other assets that can be connected and how the system can be further enhanced to drive productivity – and the snowball grows. Eventually, the IoT implementation gets so widespread that it drives organization-wide transformational change in processes and data capture.