Manufacturing companies across the world are trying to figure out a way to integrate data and simulate it for meaningful decision-making. Complete deployment of smart manufacturing with IIoT and cloud technology has brought the industry to the doorstep of this end-to-end connectivity.

As factories strive to boost productivity and improve operational costs, the demand to deliver new technology that empowers intelligence at the Edge is increasing. ”What does the edge mean?” The Edge is where the machine meets or interacts with the real world.

New Edge XRT technology provides extended OT connectivity, auto-discovery for easy device onboarding, a new MQTT API to simplify integration and management, combined with improved performance and scalability.

Solar plants have critical monitoring and management needs. In many cases, traditional wired infrastructure for monitoring and management is not feasible, so equipping sites with appropriate 4G/LTE gateways provides a useful and comprehensive network backup mechanism to secure data and offer network stability.

The Porsche plants in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen and Leipzig implemented a common data infrastructure and universal cloud connectivity based on Connectware technology. A neutral technical framework provides a wide variety of digital solutions along the production chain that can be implemented efficiently and in a compatible manner.

Intrinsics Imaging’s AI-powered vision system uses edge I/O to connect the cloud to the edge.

Making sense of the edge, most manufacturing facilities are not in a position for the widespread deployment of edge devices, or edge platforms to converge these technologies. Instead, manufacturers need scalable options in their journey to digitalisation — and independent software can be the glue that makes this possible.

Major IoT vendors including AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and SIEMENS leverage secure, standardized information exchange in edge-to-cloud applications based on OPC UA.

Industry experts weigh in and provide their perspective on the state of IT-OT Convergence in the modern manufacturing plant. This special progress report takes a look at cybersecurity, enterprise data connectivity and how common network diagnostic and management tools can increase IT-OT effectiveness.

Ever shorter response times, increasing volatility and almost unmanageable complexity are bringing production challenges into sharp focus. But the IIoT is providing a new architecture for factory automation which enables an ultra-flexible production concept for companies – for greater adaptivity and resilience.