Enterprise IoT

Chapter 4. Manufacturing and Industry

The application of IoT concepts to industrial environments has attracted a lot of interest. GE has coined the term “Industrial Internet,” IBM is pushing the concept of “smart factories,” German industry uses the term “Industry 4.0,” while Airbus talks about the “factory of the future.” Precise definitions are few and far between, and many of these concepts go beyond the notion of next-generation manufacturing to include logistics and supply chain management, mining and offshore drilling, and even smart grids and building automation.

In some cases, a worthwhile distinction is made between the Industrial IoT and the Consumer IoT. As we saw in Chapter 1, our definition of Enterprise IoT is less about specific application domains and more about openness and integration maturity. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at some of the more industrial applications of Enterprise IoT, starting with a discussion about how IoT will transform manufacturing from the perspective of both product engineering and production technology.

Integrated Production for Integrated Products

We believe that the IoT will have two main areas of impact on the current manufacturing landscape. The first concerns the organizational structure that is required to produce truly integrated IoT solutions. As discussed in Chapter 1, the IoT involves a clash between two worlds in which those in the machine camp and those in the Internet camp will be required to work together ...