Industrial IoT Systems

IoT is a key technology enabler for Industry 4.0 and is increasingly being implemented in manufacturing. This subset of IoT, known as Industrial IoT (IIoT), integrates IoT functionality into industrial settings. While new production systems often come with IoT capabilities by default, many manufacturing companies still rely on legacy equipment that can be upgraded using IoT solutions. Upgrading existing machinery is especially important, as manufacturing equipment is typically designed to last for decades, making frequent replacements impractical. Consequently, IIoT is essential for modernizing older machinery to meet today's data-driven production demands, enhance efficiency, reduce downtime, minimize production waste, and lower the overall carbon footprint.

Recently, a new industrial paradigm called Industry 5.0 has emerged. Industry 5.0 builds on the principles of Industry 4.0, with a stronger emphasis on human well-being, resilience, and sustainability. In this context, IoT plays a vital role in achieving these objectives.

Although the general concepts and architecture remain the same as common IoT, the industrial sub-domain sets specific features and requirements for designing IoT solutions for the industry. Industrial application fields can be divided into manufacturing and production, energy and utilities, transportation and logistics, agriculture and farming, construction and building, automotive, etc. All these application fields have their specifics but also share common features that are important for implementing IoT systems and what must be addressed in the IoT system designing process from the very beginning. These features are:

• Industry standards. All different aspects of IoT systems, like hardware, software, interfaces and data formats, must consider industry standards and protocols.
• Reliability and Robustness. In the production environment, hardware components must resist much stronger environmental influences, which can often be costly to maintain or fix faulty nodes. Installation and management of the hardware components of IoT as well as software upgradability aspects must be designed already in conceptual stage.
• Enhanced security and safety. While IoT devices are connected to real production machinery, cybersecurity and general security play a much higher role. Unauthorised access to heavy machinery can cause significant financial losses or even fatal human injuries.
• Scalability and Interoperability. Once the system is implemented on a certain scale, it is often the case that new equipment or production lines will be added over time. IoT system must be designed in a way that new production resources can be easily included into IoT system without starting new IoT system conceptual design. Production is also often dealing with legacy equipment where IoT can help ti integrate together modern and legacy production equipment.
• Data protection and privacy. Data is considered as one of the most valuable asset of the modern industry. Data protection in industry requires special attention as well as workforce privacy aspects if they are included under IoT system monitoring domain.
• Cost consideration. IoT systems are intended to make industrial systems more efficient and safe. Balancing between the cost of the system (consisting of development, installation and maintenance cost) and added value is often critical design consideration of industrial IoT system.