Our bright digital future which has recently been a dream is our reality now. A flying car is still just a prototype and is under development, but there are many more new technologies, devices, and applications besides them. We will talk about new technologies in our article, namely, the Industrial Internet of Things.

What is IIoT?

People started to wonder what does this term means? They are particularly interested in almost everything, starting from the meaning of the term and the history of appearance and ending with companies that provide complete solutions for large industries.

IoT is basically a system that connects physical objects through a network. These objects are sensors, detectors, and switching equipment. All these devices have one unique opportunity – interaction with each other without human factor interference. IIoT is about the autonomy of smart devices and their ability to exchange data. Thanks to this connection, devices can not only exchange information but also store data, analyze it and make appropriate decisions. This technology has made good progress. The implemented system in the production can monitor the technical condition of the equipment everywhere, issue notifications of an impending breakdown, as well as find the cause of the malfunction and self-learn using AI. The purpose of this technology is to increase industrial productivity and efficiency, as well as safety.

Hearing the word “industrial” people always associate it with something serious and huge, for example, with production shops and shipyards. That’s right, but IoT technologies can also be implemented in the areas of healthcare, finance, trade, agriculture, and marketing. 

History

The first references to the “Internet of Things” date back to 1985, when researcher Peter Lewis mentioned the term in his statement to the US Communications Commission. But used to consider that the first person who coined the term was Kevin Ashton.

This person worked for P&G and was involved in supply chain optimization. At one of his presentations, he wanted to draw attention to an interesting technology called RFID, and since the Internet was at the peak of popularity at that time, he decided to call his presentation “The Internet of Things”. But, as we see,  his idea wasn’t widespread at that time, but they have been waiting on its way for 10 years.

There are many more references to this term, but it is better to dwell on theory and practice. 

In the 90s, absolutely all activities which were related to IoT were exclusively theoretical. That is, there were only concepts, discussions and ideas for implementation.

In 1998, the scientist Mark Weiser created a fountain that has interesting functionality – it synchronizes with changes in the stock market and reflects the ongoing changes.

The rapid development of IoT occurred in the 2000s. At that time, people began to move from theory to practice and launch good projects, which later became successful.  That’s when the world first saw such devices as a fitness tracker, smart doors, smart irrigation systems. It was a time for the rise of such projects as self-driving automobiles, smart cities, and smart manufacturing. All this has become possible and affordable due to constant progress in the growing IT field. 

That means the development of IoT has been going on for decades, but large-scale growth and progress began only in 2008. This year, Cisco announced that the true birth of IoT happened at a very time when the number of appliances attached to the Internet became much more than people on the planet. Now it’s 2020, and the number of connected devices is so large that there are 2-3 devices per one person.

IIoT Benefits and Uniqueness

The industrial Internet of things is an indispensable technology that, will help business owners to get an accurate idea of ​​the functionality of the enterprise and its failures, and thereby help to make the best decisions through the collection of data.

The introduction of IIoT is a particularly profitable technology for enterprises because it can significantly improve scalability, connection efficiency, save time and money. Companies can decently save on costs and at the same time receive considerable benefits thanks to the existence of IIoT. 

The uniqueness of IIoT can hardly be underestimated because the introduction of this system into an enterprise radically changes the company’s daily activities. For example, analysis and prediction are super important functions that help to detect a malfunction before it”s break.

Broken equipment or a machine can cause losses to the enterprise because the whole production will be stopped due to a malfunction. Maintenance exists at every enterprise, but it will take some production time each time, which is not a plus.

Using IIoT will do a good job because the intelligent service uses sensors to continuously collect information, as well as identify problems and potential failures. This state of affairs will minimize the time of inactivity of the enterprise and will not bring any damage. 

Challenges

It takes effort and a large amount of data, as well as AI modeling, to get a good and reliable prediction result. All this takes a lot of time and manual effort. To solve these and potential problems, Vixtera invented a comprehensive solution to analyze the cause of a breakdown. This algorithm analyzes the reasons for the failure of the device, and also takes this reason as a source for further NN training.

This algorithm is a reliable tool in detecting failures by eliminating human involvement, providing an accurate source of analysis and reducing equipment maintenance costs.