Device Ecosystem at the Edge – Manufacturing Scenario
1. Production Device – These are
production machines / assembly lines
/ process lines that carry out
operations on the raw material /
intermediate products to produce
intermediate products / final products.
2. Supporting Device – These are
machines / components that help the
production process such as robots,
conveyor belts, etc. Supporting devices
include bar code / radio frequency
identification (RFID) readers, cameras,
etc.
3. Utilities – These provide required
resources including energy for
production and also chillers, cooling
towers, boilers, compressors, etc.
4. Test Device – Various testbeds,
instruments and gauges used in testing
and calibration.
5. IIoT Human Machine Interface (HMI)
– IIoT HMI represents people at the
Edge. This can be an HMI, a mobile /
tablet or even a wearable device (We
call it IIoT HMI to differentiate it from
the HMI of the machines).
I NTRODUCTION
Any manufacturing setup, whether discrete
or process, has a large number and variety of
machines and assets. These include
production machines, robots, conveyors,
process equipment, utilities such as chillers,
cooling towers, instruments and many
others. Last but not the least, it includes
people! So the ‘Edge’ is pretty colorful!
‘Smart
Manufacturing’
denotes
a
manufacturing paradigm that creates and
uses data generated from machines and
other sources to achieve high productivity
and quality as well as respond rapidly to
changes in demand. This is achieved by the
convergence of Operations Technology (OT),
Information Technology (IT), Industrial
Automation & Control Systems (IACS),
Networking and Communications.
Many of the Smart Manufacturing systems
concentrate only on the main production
equipment. But that is not enough. To make
the shop floor truly ‘Smart,’ an Industrial
Internet of Things (IIoT) system has to
include the entire manufacturing landscape
in the set up consisting of machines, assets,
devices and people.
More categories may be discovered as one
explores the Edge Ecosystem.
Device Composition
The device as perceived by a user may be
comprised of multiple components, each
connected separately to the gateway. For
example, an Injection Moulding Machine
may be comprised of the following:
machine PLC (OPC UA), temperature
controller (4-20 mA signal), dehumidifier (4-
E DGE E COSYSTEM
Let us take a look at different types of
‘devices’ living in the Edge. We will use the
term ‘device’ in a broad sense to represent
anything that is connected to an Edge
Gateway. We will categorize devices as
follows:
IIC Journal of Innovation
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