According to Wikipedia, the internet of things (IoT, sometimes internet of everything) is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electroncs, software, sensors and, and connectivity to enable objects to exchange data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices We asked number of experts in the automation field to share with us their views about IoT and the automation industry – the industrial internet of things (IIoT). EngineerIT asked the following experts for their opinions.
John Conway, Schneider Electric; John Eigelaar, Keystone Electronic Solutions; Hennie Blignaut, Endress+Hauser; John Botes, Consillia; Dave Wibberley, Adroit Technologies; David Bean, Industrial Data Xchange and Keith Fenner, ERP Africa.
The internet of things (IoT) – connecting the unconnected – has become something of a buzzword; creating the impression that the technology behind it is new. The real question for the automation industry is whether it is revolutionary or evolutionary?
John Conway, Schneider Electric VP, strategy and partnerships, industry business: “The choice of wording for this question is very interesting – these are the exact terms we at Schneider Electric are using to describe this journey to our customers. We see the advent of the industrial internet of things (IIoT) as an ‘evolution’ not a ‘revolution’.” He cites two reasons. “Our customers have a large installed base of legacy systems that will not disappear overnight and we anticipate that they will want to evolve this base over time towards the IIoT vision. Industry in general is very conservative and prefers an incremental approach to change, even if the perceived benefits are very high.
“At Schneider Electric we started working on the IIoT concept in the late 90s. We called it “The Transparent Factory” and it was about promoting Ethernet as a real-time plant floor network combined with embedded web servers in PLCs and drives in order to simplify connectivity (using web browsers) and diagnostics/debugging. In this sense, Schneider Electric is an IIoT pioneer. We have amassed decades of experience in managing data at the plant level and adding innovation to automation, leading to simpler, safer and more flexible processes and machines.”
John Eigelaar, director and co-founder of Keystone Electronic Solutions agrees. He said: “The internet of things (IoT) is definitely an evolution of existing practices and it is being driven by the convergence of technologies. These include the availability of reliable internet bandwidth almost anywhere on the planet, the existence of extremely power efficient and powerful microcontrollers that are capable of handling complex protocols such as IP and mesh networking and the low cost, low power RF interfaces that are inherently capable of complex protocols such as WiFi and Zigbee. These factors provide the opportunity to integrate protocols and service that were previously almost exclusively limited to the internet into the domain of automation and control.”
Hennie Blignaut, marketing manager, Endress+Hauser believes that the need for connectivity in an easy and pragmatic way is evolutionary. “It was inevitable with technology changes. It was also inevitable that these changes would flow over into the automation industry. We cannot predict the future changes. What is clear and required, is that in processes efficiency gains are key and technology changes must work towards these gains whether it is food processing, supplying clean drinking water, recycling waste or producing power.
“The term ‘internet of things’ finds its origin in North America and describes how a central computer system is replaced by ‘intelligent objects’ or ‘things’. To this end, ever smaller, inconspicuous microprocessors are used. These could be woven into clothing and provided with sensors that e.g. measure body temperature. This kind of high-tech clothing, so-called wearables, will find increasing use in the future, particularly in medicine. There are, of course, many other possibilities for using such miniature, intelligent sensors.”
John Botes, group CEO of Consillia says that it would be a mistake to see IoT as a simple evolution of machine to machine (M2M) communications. “M2M is simply about connecting individual assets to a network for tracking and monitoring, for example; a car or a factory machine. IoT, by contrast, is about making every asset part of a wider ecosystem. An important part of the IoT concept is that it integrates physical devices – whether they are cars, fridges, factory machines, or irrigation systems – with the digital world. The IoT weaves devices, assets, sensors and systems together into an intelligent, interconnected fabric. Each device in this ecosystem can not only monitor itself and share information with another devices – it can also gather contextual information (such as humidity, geolocation or temperature) and share it with other devices and services. These IoT devices can also take intelligent actions without human interaction.”
Dave Wibberley, MD of Adroit Technologies agrees that IoT is evolutionary and that the time has never been better to take advantage of what the internet can deliver; however there are still some significant barriers, regards IP addresses, costs, and security before it will truly become seen as a viable proposition within our industry.
“It is always so interesting when these new waves of technology hit the industry. IoT or M2M has been around in our industry for decades telemetry using RTUs have been doing remote monitoring and control for decades. With IP protocols even PLCs have really been exposed to the possibility of using the Internet as the communications network.
“The biggest challenge is the ring-fencing of sensor driven suppliers of the networks and access. You cannot simply go out there, request a fixed IP, expose a sensor to the Internet and get the data back into an open automation solution that would be able to easily derive the benefits. These solutions are largely confined to APNs and vendor-maanaged networks and ‘big data’ back-ends.
We are not in the sensor game but we have built an M2M solution on the Mitsubishi PLC range in conjunction that works with the Adroit SCADA. The target market is for customers and OEMs that wish to have the flexibility and power of an off-the-shelf PLC that can reside anywhere in the world on a machine or application, yet would like a central monitoring service, either hosted in their office or even on the web somewhere in a data centre.”
David Bean, MD of Industrial Data Xchange does not think that think it matters whether you consider it to be revolutionary or evolutionary – the real question to be answered is: how do I successfully align my current and future requirements with what is offered by IoT? “Our industries are subject to changes on multiple fronts that may be either gradual or sudden – flexibility and agility will help a business or individual survive and even thrive in this uncertainty. ”
Keith Fenner, VP ERP Africa: “Everyday devices in the home and factory are increasingly equipped with internet-connected sensors that allow them to monitor themselves as well as gather contextual information (temperature or GPS location, for example), and share it with other devices and services. This is called the internet of things, where an ecosystem of connected devices can take automated actions without a human being in the middle to make decisions. Along with related trends such as big data analytics and cloud computing, the rise of IoT is a disruptive force that will change the ways in which companies operate.
“While it builds on existing technologies such as machine to machine communications and the internet, it represents a massive step forward in the levels of automation it promises, the data it allows us to gather, and its reach into business infrastructure and into consumers’ lives.”
IoT is a massive instrumented world of intelligent sensors and actuators improving performance and efficiency. Will it streamline, collapse existing various architectures into one and create system architectures that are more economic, effective and reduce operating costs?
John Conway: “IIoT architectures bring the promise of the elimination of silos across the enterprise, driving increased flexibility and enabling new business models. The classic automation architecture as defined by ISA95 clearly distinguishes between real-time deterministic control layers and ‘right’ time transactional MOM and ERP layers. While this hierarchy has been used extensively throughout industry, it does have its limitations, including limited flexibility and use of standards, and so I believe that over time and as the ISA95 based systems evolve to meet the needs of the IIoT next-generation systems, the rigid hierarchy will disappear and be replaced by a flatter enterprise architecture. In the future, we believe there will be two layers: an enterprise cloud running all the ERP, MOM and EAM applications and a time-sensitive IP-based layer for the real-time automation world.
“The two layers will be tightly coupled with transparent access to information at source across both layers. The benefit of this flatter architecture is not the cost of the automation systems themselves. Rather it’s more related to transparent access to information at the source from any other part of the enterprise. What this brings is tremendous flexibility.
“Today, if I want to implement new applications such as energy management, or condition monitoring, it is very difficult if not impossible to get information from the rigid ISA95 hierarchy. To do it, I have to implement a lot of custom programming, or duplicate information with additional sensors and, as a result, the new application is not economically viable.
“Tomorrow, not only will I be able to add new wireless sensors in a cost effective manner, I will also be able to get the additional information needed from the rest of the plant in a very simple transparent manner to realise my application. All of a sudden, those non-viable applications become very attractive.”
John Eigelaar has a good point. He says that IoT is not, in itself, an automation and control system, it merely provides a framework for the reliable exchange of data between the largest subset of devices. “Our experience in this arena has found a trend of installing much more powerful functionality at a very low level, such as sensors that not only measure, but also act on this measurement utilising data from other sources. This trend is towards decentralisation rather than centralised consolidation and this lends itself to implementations that provide more effective control systems as well as better optimisation through integration with systems such as corporate ERP (enterprise resource planning) and enterprise reporting frameworks. The availability of accurate real time data at all levels of the organisation is a powerful enabler in the decision making process.”
Dave Wibberley finds this side of things hard to understand or believe. Within a process plant everything needs to come back for the safe operation, using a robust device such as a PLC. “Where I can understand value add would be “non-core” data that may allow for suppliers to add value add services such as vibration, temperature, performance that would allow a machine supplier to use the large data for analysis and customer feedback, predicting failures or offering operational advice, because they have the capability of comparing global performance of similar assets. The sheer IT complexity of getting lots of minute pieces of data on-line is not a trivial task, along with the added responsibility of managing the low cost devices are all working against this right now.”
Johan Botes: “In time, the IOT could have a profound impact on how businesses as diverse as utilities, factories, banks, and logistics companies work. It will enable enterprises to automate many tasks and roles that once needed human intervention. In the process, it will speed up business processes, reduce costs, and allow for timelier, better-informed decision-making.” He cites a few examples: “Machines and sensors in the field will gather rich data that can be used to make better business decisions. It will help organisations to become more efficient, for example, by automating processes that once needed human intervention, or by ensuring better usage of assets in the field. IoT could help reduce costs in a range of ways, including better maintenance of assets, streamlined business processes, etc and the technology could enhance safety and security in the workplace – for example, detection of gas levels and leakages in industrial environments.”
What standards do you and your organisation believe are fundamental to ensure IoT success in the automation environment?
Johan Botes: “With the IoT emerging as such a potentially lucrative opportunity, there are many companies fighting over the market. Google, Bosch, General Electric, Qualcomm, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, ARM and Cisco are just some examples. Without industry standard reference architectures and a commitment to open application programming interfaces, devices and software from these many players wouldn’t be able to talk to each other. Wireless standards and specifications for sensors are also important.
“Without standards you might, for example, need to open a different app for each device and asset in your environment, or machines from different manufacturers otherwise your factory floor wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other. This would defeat the point of the IoT, which is to be an integrated ecosystem. There are a number of standard groups in the industry, including the likes of Industrial Internet Consortium, the Allseen Alliance, Thread and the Open Interconnect Consortium. Some of them are competing with each other – the fragmentation is one factor that might slow down the adoption of the IoT.”
Dave Wibberley: “The IoT world has a long way to go regards standards. It is essentially fragmented between the network suppliers, machine/equipment suppliers. Most of whom do not have global reach to support such a plethora of distributed communications equipment, at global pricing. What this means is that suppliers are having to develop relationships locally, pricing and regulations and complexity is different. Pricing is also different.”
David Bean: “We are watching OPC-UA and Industry 4 closely but also many other initiatives with multi-channel data feed into cloud-based repositories such as Microsoft Azure IoT services. We are also assessing competing wireless standards such as LoRa, NFC, 6LoWPAN and others.”
Hennie Blignaut: “Endress+Hauser is part of German trade organisations such as BITKOM, VDMA and ZVEI which coordinate measures for its development and implementation. Industry 4.0 encapsulates much which was in existence before 2011 in IEC TC65 and TC65E which has been working on some of the necessary standards.”
John Eigelaar: “We believe in simplicity, scalability and interoperability when selecting protocols for our IoT implementations. We have been using an IoT stack built on proven open protocols as a result. IPv6 will become a major component of any IoT installation if the predicted 50-billion connected devices are realised by 2020. In the second instance, we have taken a leaf out of the book of the original drivers of reliable and fast information exchange – the banking and financial industry – by adopting the AMQP standard for messaging and data exchange. Finally, data is exchanged in JSON format which is already the de-facto standard for data exchange on mobile devices.”
John Conway: “Schneider Electric has long been a champion of open industry standards. We are committed to furthering the development of open standards, and ensuring their implementation across our ecosystem of smart connected products and systems. Our decision to provide Modbus TCP in 1997 as an open standard, and its continued use as the most widely adopted Ethernet protocol for industry today, is proof of our commitment.
“As mentioned in question 1, IIoT seems to bring with it the hype of something that will take a long time to adopt. Indeed there are some IIoT concepts, like self-organising machines and assets and mass customisation, that will take a long time to adopt, and this is because of the need to establish new standards, particularly in the area of semantics. When the car coming down the production line asks the paint-shop to paint it yellow, that ‘discussion’ requires a standardised semantic definition. Otherwise, I am back to rigid, custom programming of one-off applications.
“We also recognise that that addressing cyber security is a key requirement for the adoption of IIoT and we are working at many levels to achieve this – including the development of security certified products and standards and secure remote solutions and services. We are a strong supporter of the IEC62443 standard. We also see OPC UA gaining traction in industry, but we also believe there is a need for ‘lighter’ protocols like MQTT.”
Will implementation of IoT reduce or eliminate requirements for middle-level automation software?
John Conway: “I am not sure what is meant by “middle-level” automation software. IIoT will clearly promote a flatter architecture, with some functions moving down into the field devices. For example, machines will calculate their own OEE, rather than that being done at the MES level. The interest of this approach will be to allow the smart machine to act upon its own OEE, rather than being told what to do by a higher level system. Big data/analytics will also create new needs and more software applications. New technologies allowing us to geo-localise devices inside factories, and to track products from cradle-to-grave will create more and more software-enabled services. Overall, software will become more important in the future, but there will be less layers and more distribution across smart connected products, machines and assets.”
Hennie Blignaut: “The belief is the IoT and Industry 4.0 will ease connectivity and will always require some form of middle-level software.”
John Eigelaar: “We do not believe that this will be the case, however, we do foresee the role of these devices changing into high performance data mediation and aggregation gateways. The sheer volume of data generated by an IoT sensor mesh definitely lends itself to mediation and aggregation. It will also be necessary to contain sensor data to its intended ecosystem.”
By the nature of the IOT, it broadens the cyber-attack surface. What security measures will be required to reduce – if not – eliminate the risks of cyber-attacks and prevent unscheduled down time.”
All respondents in the panel discussion agreed that a serious look at security is a given. Here are some of their comments:
Johan Botes: ”According to IDC, around 212-billion things will be connected to the IoT by the end of 2020. Many of these things will be consumer devices, but there will also be many sensors, devices, and machines collecting sensitive information within corporate settings. Companies will need to take a holistic approach to data privacy and safety to safeguard their devices and networks from attack – we can’t be complacent since devices such as internet-connected fridges and smart TV have already been hijacked for botnet attacks. Many information security vendors are starting to extend their solutions to cater for the IoT. Companies will need to examine how they can use their existing platforms to secure network access to “things” as well as look into the vulnerabilities inherent in any of the devices, sensors and assets on their networks. They will also need to look at information security policies and update them for the IoT.”
John Eigelaar: ”The current IT security measures adopted by the corporate will need to be extended to the IoT network. Similar measures that are currently applied to the existing IT infrastructure, such as the physical and logical partitioning of networks through the use of firewalls and routers and the control of access to data and devices through the use of technologies such as RADIUS, IPSEC and SSL will have to be implemented on the IoT infrastructure. The existing best practices will need to be extended to the IoT network.”
David Been: ”There are many ISO standards that address cyber-security, and while not widely adopted, IEC62443 targets industrial security. The Frost & Sullivan/Schneider Electric White Paper by Schneider “Cybersecurity for Industrial Automation & Control Environments” does a good job in expressing how poorly we are equipped to deal with the challenge but also proposes practical guidelines towards a “defence-in-depth approach”.
What have the IoT and the German Industry 4.0 have in common?
John Conway: ”IIoT and Industry 4.0 are both about digitisation – social machines that interact with operators and the products themselves, smart products that interact back with machines for customised manufacturing, augmenting operators with technology to make their work easier, virtual production to optimise design and performance, and a truly globally linked operation.
“The differences are in their approaches to digitisation. IIoT is an idea that has been led in the US – it takes into consideration cyber physical systems and concepts from companies like GE (The industrial internet) and Cisco (The internet of everything). There are trillions of dollars tied up in connecting things, the cloud and new business processes to leverage same. I would say that this is an IT-driven test bed approach.
“Industry 4.0 has its roots in a Germany-led focus on manufacturing excellence – covering smart machines, factories and energy production. I believe this is more of an OT-driven approach that involves government and academia. What is common is the wide-spread recognition that a unified approach is required to defining common industry standards if we are to realise the true benefits of IIoT and Industry 4.0.”
Hennie Blignaut: ”The term “Industry 4.0″ alludes to the fourth industrial revolution and stands for the development of the so-called smart factory. The first industrial revolution was based on water and steam power, the second ushered in mass production using assembly lines and electricity. The third industrial revolution was digital and led to the widespread use of electronics and IT to further automated production.
“It is clear that Industry 4.0 describes the smart factory, while the internet of things describes the linking of uniquely identifiable physical objects (things) ensuring that two are ultimately linked. Furthermore, these changes will be associated with wide-reaching technological and economic consequences that will also affect instrumentation and system manufacturers.”
Will automation and IoT lead to increased unemployment?
David Bean: “I do not have any empirical evidence but have a sense that they threaten low-skilled and hazardous occupations and others where repetitive patterns exist whilst creating opportunities for people with skills in data analysis, data manipulation and the ability to harness technology. I guess automation and connectivity will continue to advance up the food-chain forcing more emphasis on soft skills that deal with human emotion and holistic well-being. It will certainly put a strain on economies like South Africa with huge pools of uneconomic labour threatened by shrinking opportunities for meaningful employment.”
Johan Botes: “Each great leap in technology since the industrial revolution has automated some jobs out of existence while creating new roles. The challenge for businesses and government is to transition the skills base from lower-skilled, manual jobs to ones that require higher levels of skills and knowledge, especially in a country with such poor labour absorption and so many unskilled workers.
“The change can be painful for the people affected by disruptive technologies – whether we are talking about the Luddites of industrial revolution England, taxi drivers threatened by Uber, or factory workers who might be replaced by a robot in the future. But in the longer term, technological progress generally helps to make work safer, create prosperity, and ultimately, allow people to focus on meaningful, interesting work rather than tedious, back-breaking labour.”
John Conway: “What we do know is that in many of the industries we serve there are less and less skilled operators inside the plant. As today’s highly skilled workforce ages and moves to retirement there is an increasingly large gap between those workers and new operators coming in. Bridging that gap is about making the operators that you do have as effective as they can be. I believe this is one of the business opportunities IIoT brings us that we can exploit now. Simple things like dynamic QR codes for smart diagnostics help reduce plant downtime by putting the information that operators need at their fingertips. Using mobile apps to configure and control devices means faster commissioning.
“New workers are digital natives, they are used to the Apple experience and so we need to make the plant of the future user-centric, not machine-centric.”
Dave Wibberley: “I believe the biggest potential benefit will be for customers to leverage the information being generated by way of analysing and advising customers as to how to run their plants.The maintenance staff will increase, the services on suppliers will increase but I can’t see it changing operational staff.”
Additional comments
Dave Wibberley: “Having been involved in developing and deploying IoT and M2M solutions there are more challenges than solutions. After two years we are now in a position to reliably and confidently offer any customers a hosted SCADA/PLC solution over the internet.
“We have also recently ported the communications software into the C++ world, and we now have customers deploying our M2M solution but using their own hardware design but the knowledge that we take care of all the communications challenges makes this offering very compelling to IoT/M2M developers.”
Hennie Blignaut: “Industry 4.0 opens up the possibility of increasing activities in WirelessHART and plant asset management but it is to be expected that in the ‘internet of things’ considerably more data will be transmitted by wireless. This will often be in addition to hard-wired real-time transmission of process data via, for example, industrial Ethernet.”“
Johan Conway: “IIoT must bring additional value to end users – it is not about technology change for the sake of change. We can talk about solutions that are based on open and standard Internet technologies that enable secure access to devices and information from the control system in order to leverage (big) data and analytics and mobility technologies – but ultimately it has to help our customers achieve greater business control and tangible business value through improvements to efficiency and profitability, increased cyber security and innovation and better management of safety, performance and environmental impact.”
Thank you to our panellists for their valuable input. From the discussions is clear that the automation industry is ready to embrace IoT or, as some prefer, IIoT.
Readers’ comments are also welcome – send to engineerit@ee.co.za.
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