How Industrial IoT works (for non-technical people.)

Photo by Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs

IIoT is a bit different from IoT.

• The Internet of Things (IoT) is all around you and most noticeably in your home, from your doorbell to your speakers to any number of other “things”.
• The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) on the other hand is operating on entirely a different level of scale in factories, in field service, and in training.

I used to work in the field for PTC, one of the leading software vendors in the engineering, manufacturing IIoT space and thought I would take a few moments here to lay out here at a high level for the everyday person what the Industrial Internet of Things is all about.

Let’s talk about factories.

Bottling juice

You like Orange juice right?

Let’s magically say you’re now the plant manager at a big orange juice bottling plant. Let’s say one of your bottling plants is producing 50,000 bottles of juice an hour on an automated production line. What happens if one part of that production line goes down unexpectedly?

• Major backups in production.