Is IIoT a Product or a Solution?

IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), Industry 4.0, Smart manufacturing etc. are the buzzwords these days in the manufacturing community. Every plant wishes to make use of IIoT to become smarter in terms of planning, predicting and profit-making. IIoT promises to bring in more accuracy through data intelligence and data analytics for any industrial plant. It is an exciting time to be in this domain.

A very common question that I come across from majority of our industrial customers - Is IIoT a product or a solution? A very valid question I would say. The question arises from the fact that many packaged IIoT products are being sold (or mis-sold?) in the market leading to major belief establishment that IIoT is a product. So is it really a product? Lets go back to the basics.

What is a product? A product is something which meets a common need or necessity faced by many and can be packaged and distributed with limited data about the end customer. For eg. a simple product like Television meets the need of home entertainment which is a common household requirement. A contemporary TV company does not really need to customize it's product to every individual customer's requirements. In fact the requirements are largely known and the product is released keeping current trends in mind.

How about a solution? A solution is something which aims to solve a problem and / or enhance existing system capabilities to meet specific end-goal requirements of a customer. A solution is customized to meet the customer’s needs and expectations based on their specific requirements. It considers several data points as part of the requirements analysis and meets the customer's goals while presenting new opportunities, previously unknown to the customer himself (or herself).

Presenting new opportunities previously unknown to the customer? Really? Yes, once a machine has learnt the patterns over a period of time, it can work far more efficiently and intelligently than a human brain. It does require a huge data-set for successful recommendations and automations though. For eg. Amazon found a trend between people buying smartphones and people buying jackets (imperceptible to human brain) - weird but true. Of course the recommendations are a function of several factors such as buying history, location, demographics etc. Machines are learning and they are learning fast - don't worry, as of now not all human jobs are at risk ;-). More about it in my later posts.

So coming back to the original query, can IIoT ever be or should be sold as a product? Going by the above definitions – can IIoT be defined as a product? Can two factories (I interchangeably use factory and plants but they mean the same) despite being in the same domain or sector ever have the same internal problems? The simple answer to all these questions is NO.

IIoT is a customized solution that should not be and cannot be thought of as a packaged product. It has to be looked at as a customized solution offering meeting the specific requirements, objectives and goals of a particular customer. Some factories might be facing a problem with maintenance scheduling, some with production planning, some with resource planning while some might be struggling to contain the production costs. IIoT as a solution attempts to address specific problems faced by a plant in a systematic manner, backed by sufficient data science and intelligent data analytics.

For the sake of discussion, let us assume that two plants in the same domain / sector have identical problems. Can they still use the same product (if IIoT is considered a product) to address their problems? The answer is again a simple NO. A product, howsoever customizable (if at all it is), would still have certain limitations and the customizations may not necessarily integrate seamlessly with the existing product setup and offerings. On the factory front, the two plants will still have their own setup of machines, legacy systems, resources, requirements, challenges etc. Based on this, the two plants will have their own expectations from the delivery of a IIoT project which cannot be met by a standard product.

Additionally IIoT is in it's nascent stages (in India). The current IIoT software products use their own software black box with little scope for customization without IIoT product vendor intervention. In a nutshell it is not scalable. With regards to communication between machines and the communication between machines and humans, there are several communication protocols such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, EnOcean, LoRa etc. all being simultaneously used in a heterogenous network. These need to seamlessly communicate and inter-operate with other devices in the network based on the plant's existing system and protocols used by the devices of other equipment vendors. The other challenges faced by IIoT products are scalability and security. Will cover more on these topics in my later posts.

Ideally a plant planning for IIoT should first get clarity on the requirements, challenges and expectations by hiring an expert to do this job for them. This helps in avoiding future pains such as cost over-runs and also helps in setting realistic goals and expectations from the IIoT project. Looking at IIoT as a solution to the plant's problems is the first step in getting started.

So when are you getting started with IIoT?