IIoT analytics framework technical report published

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), has published the IIC Industrial IoT Analytics Framework Technical Report (IIAF), which features a complete set of instructions that IIoT system architects and business leaders can use to deploy industrial analytics systems in their organizations.

By Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) October 24, 2017

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), has published the IIC Industrial IoT Analytics Framework Technical Report (IIAF). It is a technical document that includes a complete set of instructions that Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) system architects and business leaders can use to deploy industrial analytics systems in their organizations.

The IIAF is a blueprint designed to help system architects and designers to map analytics to the IIoT applications they are supporting, to ensure that business leaders can realize the potential of analytics to enable more-informed decision-making.

"Using analytics to provide insights is the holy grail of industrial IoT," said Wael William Diab, IIC industrial analytics task group chair, IIC steering committee member and senior director at Huawei. "The IIC IIAF takes a holistic approach by developing the foundational principles of industrial analytics as well as looking at the complete picture from design considerations to creation of business value and functionality. This entire ecosystem approach is valuable to both business leaders as well as technologists, engineers and architects looking to deploy IIoT systems."

The IIC IIAF offers a broad scope of requirements and concerns for industrial analytics applied to IIoT systems. It shows IIoT system architects the steps involved in developing analytics for IIoT systems with state-of-the-art information, including definitions and information flows that shows how the technologies can be applied to the applications. Guidance is provided how and where to deploy industrial analytics based on the characteristics of the applications and outcome expectations. In addition, the IIAF looks at emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data, which are expected to play an increasingly important role in industrial analytics.

Analytics have been applied to other many other fields such as finance and retail to improve the customer experience and increase corporate revenue. The major differentiation in industrial settings is the physicality of the systems. For example, if IIoT systems are not configured correctly, or if their maintenance schedule is wrong, the systems can cause physical harm. 

When analytics are applied to machine and process data, they help optimize decision-making and enable intelligent operations. These new insights and intelligence can be applied across all levels of any enterprise in any industry if the appropriate data can be collected, curated and analytics are applied correctly.

"In transforming machine raw data into actionable information, industrial analytics plays a crucial role in the industrial Internet just like refineries that turns crude oil into high energy fuel. The actionable information from the analytics is the fuel that drives the optimization of industrial operations and production, the creation of new revenue streams and the enablement of new business models," said Shi-wan Lin, IIC technology working group chair and CEO and co-founder, Thingswise, LLC.

Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC)

www.iiconsortium.org 

– Edited from an IIC press release by CFE Media. See more Control Engineering IIoT and Industrie 4.0 stories.