Industrial Automation Using Internet of Things

Internet of Things

The term Internet of things (IoT) was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton of P&G (Procter & Gamble). IoT basically is an interconnection of objects such as appliances, devices, vehicles and other items, broadly termed as “things”. It comprises of devices such as sensors and actuators, hardware and firmware electronics, system and application software, and finally the connectivity which “enables” objects to link together and interchange data. Each “thing” has an address to uniquely identify the object and an ability to connect and operate with existing internet infrastructure. As per the estimates, IoT will span approximately 30 billion objects by 2020. The global market value of IoT is estimated at $7.1 trillion growing at a healthy compounded annual growth rate. IoT is blurring the lines between the physical and digital world. This meshed world is popularly known as “phygital” world. IoT enables “things” to be sensed, configured, monitored and operated (controlled) remotely leveraging the existing internet infrastructure. The key benefits of IoT are improved operational efficiency and productivity through automation, energy conservation, better precision and accuracy, improved safety and security and economic benefits like increased revenue and reduced expenses with reduced human intervention. Further, IoT is slated to improve end-user experience, engagement and satisfaction.

Industrial Internet of Things

The term Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) was defined by General Electric [GE] in 2012. Industrial Internet is basically embedding of devices such as sensors, actuators and other similar instrumentation in machines to create a world of Smart Machines. IIoT, in a true sense provides a platform to converge global industrial systems using low-cost/low-power sensing devices that generate “Big Data” [High volume, High Velocity and High Variety] by adopting advanced analytics and computing. The platform is an interconnected mesh comprising of Machine-to-Machine [M2M] and People-to-Machine [P2M] and Machine-to-People [M2P]. IIoT meshes the “Industrial” world with “Digital” world and has the potential to transform and automate global Industries. The paradigm shift being “industrial data” as the source of competitive advantage which can be processed “anywhere” in a “hyper-connected” world. IIoT provides capability to manufacturing organizations to collect, aggregate and analyze large amounts of sensitive machine data in near real time mode to configure, monitor, manage and maintain machine performance and availability. Further, aggregated machine performance can improve efficiency of connected Factories/ Plants/ Assembly lines. Finally, the data collected could itself be smart and route itself to right users/ user community for real-time decision making. Figure 1 depicts the Components of an Industrial IoT Solution.

Figure 1.

Components of industrial IoT solutions

IIoT has tremendous potential, an estimate suggests that IIoT Solutions could add $32.3 trillion to global GDP. This represents a 46% of global economy today. The key elements of Industrial IIoT Solutions (Peter & Marco, 2012) are:

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  Intelligent/ Smart Machines: Connected machines, fleets (e.g. airplanes, vehicles), facilities (buildings) and networks with sensors, actuators and application software.

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  Advanced Analytics: Combination of descriptive, predictive and prescriptive algorithms to generate real time insights for improved decision making and high end automation. Advanced Analytics requires deep understanding of both domain and attribute/ feature data.

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  People: Connecting people anywhere, anytime with any-device using any-path/any network. This is also termed as Internet of People.

Figure 2 depicts the typical data flow from Connected Machines in the form of an Industrial IoT Data loop.

Figure 2.

Industrial IoT data loop

Gartner predicts that by 2021 a million IoT devices will probably be installed every hour. Further, Gartner has also forecasted that there shall be 35 Billion connected “things” on the internet by 2020 and that a large proportion of these devices (47%) will be intelligent devices.