Without payload standardization, no real Industry 4.0 can be achieved!

Talking about payload standardization in OT-IT convergence has for a few years been my favorite topic as I honestly believe that it's key for the real utilization of Industry 4.0. For some reason, the market has not yet fully understood its significance and I frequently see serious attempts to solve complex OT/IT integration challenges without any attention to the payload, although it has both immediate and long-term benefits. Let's take a closer look at the main benefit I like to highlight

1. ?????????????????????? ???????? ?????? ????????. A standardized payload enables one connector with small modifications for each machine or device type to fit all types of integration. One extreme example of a benefit would be the integration of smart tools. A typical assembly factory can have a three or four-digit number of such tools having dozens of different protocols and APIs, which could instead of having dozens of connectors to cover with a few standard APIs.

As the use of standardized payload and automatic browse functions evolves the systems can configure themselves as they can be configured to search certain types of elements, devices, and process control variables among the large data hierarchy the OT is publishing.

2. ???????????? ?????? ???????? ?????????????????????????? ?????? ???? ????????. Even if you gather all data from production to data storage, having it in a non-harmonized and non-standard format makes it so troublesome to work that any investment for analytics is hard to get profitable. With harmonious and standard payload, the one-time investment scale to the multiples makes the investments highly profitable and onboarding new systems improving productivity much easier.

3. ?????? ?????????????????????? ???????? ???? ?????? ????/???? ?????????????????????? ???????????????? ???? ?????????????????????????? ??????????. Instead of supporting multiple integrations for continuous operations, interface changes, security updates, etc., the supported systems could be reduced by a decade, simplifying just everything.

4. ????????????????. The Industrial companies, both factories and their system and software vendors, are getting more and more regulation in terms of fulfilling NIST2 and CRA. To make this task easier, using standard payloads means less customized systems the end user must take responsibility for security-wise. Of course, it's not just to fulfill the regulation, but limiting the attack surface just improves the security by magnitude.

I’m not sure if I would be happy to have multiple payload standards competing for the industry standard title, but currently, there is no such competition. As generic MQTT with JSON encodings that differ between every implementation is not what we are looking forward to, the only real answer so to unlocking the above real Industry 4.0 in your factory is to use OPC UA and OPC UA companion specifications and its comprehensive build security. Yes, it’s not perfect for every use case, a standard covering a whole range of applications hardly ever is, but it's by far the best that exists.