In this 2022 special report, industry experts provide their perspective on the role of the Industrial Edge in the IIoT. With edge computing processing data where it’s generated, using solutions that connect the physical and digital worlds, plants are leveraging data to optimize workflows, save resources and improve quality.

The world is abuzz with talk of the next industrial revolution, Industry 4.0. Digitization, smart technologies, machine-to-machine communications, Internet of Things deployments, the list goes on, and on. All these innovative concepts will benefit from the standardized exchange of information between all levels of an industrial system.

As the beer industry continues to expand globally, brewing companies that operate across multiple international sites face issues with data management. There is often little consistency in how these sites track data, making it impossible to optimise performance across the brewer’s entire production landscape.

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.