While IIoT protocols play a crucial role in communicating information from one industrial system to the next, the full value of IIoT can only be realised by standardising the vocabulary with which this information is communicated. The MTConnect Standard offers such a semantic vocabulary for manufacturing equipment like Machine Tool Controllers, Robotic Arms, CNC Machines, etc. And more importantly, it integrates with other communication standards. To understand how MTConnect works and its role i...
Oct 04, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 14
By nature, industrial facilities consist of physical assets and processes that evolve through time. Therefore, each data point generated by such systems is essentially a snapshot of events at that particular point in time. By extension, this data wants to be stored in a way that reflects the sequential order of events, so that it can be rapidly queried and analysed, among many other reasons. But yet, this isn't a capability that is inherently baked into the more common Relational and NoSQL datab...
Sep 21, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 13
The success of a fully realised Industry4.0 lies in the democratisation of intelligence and the capacity for Industrial "Things" to autonomously act based on the knowledge they have. Effectively, turning each and every factory into a computer that is made up of modular processes within, in the form of Cyber-Physical systems. And central to that success, is the ease with which Industrial things like pumps and sensors can be embedded with Machine Learning functionality. To learn more about Embedde...
Sep 15, 2021•40 min•Ep. 12
As Industrial IoT matures, most of the components in the IIoT stack have become commoditised. Things like hardware, OSes, drivers, protocols, databases e.t.c But yet, many organisations still develop custom interfaces for these components, instead of adopting standards. And in cases where there is adoption, there lacks an industry-wide consistent approach to standardisation. To understand the importance of standardisation for IIoT and how vendors and end-users should engage standards, I had a co...
Jul 03, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
At the present moment, it is quite clear that the future of industrial automation will be driven by software. More so, that of IIoT. And, due to the merits that have allowed it to dominate in the IT space, Open Source software is likely to lead the industrial software revolution. Regardless of the conservative nature of the industry. To discuss the use of Open Source in building IIoT solutions, I had a conversation with Frédéric Desbiens. Frédéric is the Program Manager for IoT and Edge Computin...
Jun 02, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Nowadays, with so many IIoT concepts in the air, you can't help but breathe it in. But sometimes it's helpful to take a step back and put all of this in context to understand how we got here, as that might help shed light on what IIoT is and isn't about. To gain a fundamental understanding of OT-IT integration, I had a conversation with Benson Hougland . Benson is VP of Product Strategy at Opto 22 , a company that has been at the forefront of OT-IT integration for close to 30 years. From being a...
Apr 06, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 9
While it may be convenient to follow simple steps to get connectivity working for your IIoT solution, sometimes you are better off having an understanding of the elements that make up the broad spectrum of connectivity technologies. To understand the foundations upon which IoT protocols are built, I had a conversation with Dominik Obermaier . Dominik is the Co-Founder & CTO of HiveMQ , a company that provides an MQTT broker and a client-based messaging platform to over 130 customers includin...
Mar 15, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Developed at LinkedIn in 2010, Apache Kafka - a stream processing engine, now powers web-scale Internet companies such as Netflix, Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, and more. Profoundly impacting real-time user experience. Of equal impact, is its application in creating a continuous streaming pipeline of manufacturing data, from the factory-floor to data centers. Fundamentally changing the structural organisation of manufacturing systems. To gain an understanding of Kafka in IIoT, I had a conversation with...
Mar 08, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 7
So here's the thing, data from industrial sources is inherently messy. For example, a typical PLC system manages thousands of tags from both physical instruments and internal calculations, but this data is often unstructured, not linked to a unifying data model, and uses naming conventions that are vague to the outside world. This makes data from such sources not readily usable in analytics applications and has led to the emergence of a new field of industrial data preprocessing for IIoT, called...
Mar 08, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Cliché as it may sound, data IS the new Oil. But, to fully reap the benefits, data needs to be properly collected and advanced analytics correctly applied to it. To better understand the process, I had a conversation with one person who has close to 3 decades of building industrial data aggregation and advanced visualisation tools, Marcos Taccolini. Marc is currently the Founder and CTO of Tatsoft, a platform developer for real-time factory-floor data monitoring, SCADA and HMI Systems, Distribut...
Jan 20, 2021•59 min•Ep. 5
While the connectivity of industrial systems is the most important aspect of IIoT, there is currently a confusing mix of connectivity technologies and standards. To understand IIoT Connectivity I had a conversation with Stan Schneider , who specialises in innovation where pervasive networking meets functional AI Stan is CEO of Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the world’s largest software framework provider for smart machines & real-world systems such as power plants & autonomous vehicles Her...
Jan 19, 2021•59 min•Ep. 4
The success of IIoT in mission-critical applications depends on its ability to support local storage, compute, and connectivity for real-time responses, while sending selected data to the cloud for additional analytics. In short, Edge Computing To gain a comprehensive understanding of Edge Computing, I sat down with somebody whose day job is strategising and executing at the intersection of 5G, Edge Computing, and the Internet of Things, Rob Tiffany Rob is currently VP and Head of IoT Strategy a...
Jan 19, 2021•56 min•Ep. 3
Having a solid understanding of the key components of an IIoT architecture and how to integrate them is the most important aspect of building an IIoT application, both as an in-house solution and as a service offering So, to help shed light on the principles of IIoT architecture design, I had a discussion with one person who is best positioned to speak on the subject, Rick Bullotta Rick Co-Founded Thingworx, which is one of the first and arguably the most successful IIoT platform to date Here's ...
Jan 19, 2021•42 min•Ep. 2
Digital Twins will, undoubtedly, transform how manufacturers build and maintain products. From consumer goods to complex structures such as buildings and aircraft. But as of now, confusion and lack of its grasp are limiting adoption. To understand the technology better, I had a conversation with Pieter van Schalkwyk , whose company has helped Fortune 10 companies build Digital Twins. Here's what we discussed ✔️ What is a digital twin? ✔️ Digital modeling concepts ✔️ Types of digital twins ✔️ Dig...
Nov 19, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 1
