Three Main Themes in the Industrial Internet of Things
products, from factories to shipping facilities and to customers. There are considerable benefits
just considering the logistics management of the movement of these objects alone. It could help
to optimize the delivery of parts or products by assuring delivery quality (not damaged or
spoiled), on-time delivery (optimal routes in response to changing conditions), security
(preventing theft), safety (continuing monitoring to prevent hazardous condition and enabling
fast response in case of accidents) and lower cost and impacts (optimized means of shipping).
Many of these benefits can only be fully obtained with a real-time view of the assets (the smarttagged objects as cargos; the trucks, trains, ships, plans and drones as transport assets) and the
ability to globally optimize their movements.
The tasks required to realize the benefits from Global Optimization are complex and challenging.
First, we need to identify existing inefficiencies in operations and key performance indicators
measuring the efficiency and goals for improvement. Second, and more technically, we need to
be able to measure the key performance indicators in real-time, apply algorithms and rules to
determine the best course of actions for optimization and carry out the actions in orchestrating
the operations of the assets – all dynamically. Another task is to integrate these operational
processes with business ones, allowing the optimization to be driven by business objectives and
constrained by rules of business governance.
The IIRA can be readily applied to support the Global Optimization theme. For example, the IIRA
decomposes an Industrial Internet system into multiple functional domains. The Control Domain
concerns the functions performed by the industrial assets. The Operations Management Domain
deals with the functions for maintaining the assets to keep them up and running reliably – the
- 10 -
December 2015