The old, new: Addressing the same old challenges in the Industry 4.0 environment
Mark Armstrong
The latest industrial revolution – Industry 4.0 for those keeping count – conjures images of drones delivering parcels, self-driving cars, smart robotics and 3D printing, wrties Mark Armstrong the vice president and managing director for EMEA at Progress. The SmartThings Living Future report created by a group of academics and futurologists recently launched its vision of the future depicting 3D printed homes, downloadable food and underwater cities. But like Marty McFly’s hoverboard which really should have but never did come to pass, technologies can only develop as fast as their previous incarnations allow: they need to be built on solid foundations.
The last century and a half of industrial innovation has been riddled with things that never worked that well: ERP integration with other core business applications, universal product codes and electronic data interchange (EDI) are just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest flaw though, has been the inability to agree on common standards. Industry 4.0 is dependent on connectivity perhaps more than anything else and if devices and systems work on complex and varied standards that don’t always interoperate, there may as well be no standards whatsoever. To use a less industrial but well understood example: a connected home with an automated ordering service will not be able to gather information on whether the fridge needs to replenish juice supplies, the washing machine has run out of powder or if the coffee machine has run out of coffee pods if every device is running a different OS and operating within closed device ecosystems that do not talk together.
Unlocking the potential of IoT will rely heavily on interoperability and the ability to address the same old challenges. Tech giants which have spent so much building up these walls will have to play nicely together to agree on standards, using open source frameworks to enable innovation between them and other innovators.
The industrial IoT opportunity
Industry 4.0 involves the computerisation of machinery and automation using robotics, as well as the intelligent measurement and analysis of data to improve efficiency, profitability and safety. Third party sources predict that global investment in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will reach $500 billion by 2020. Companies that introduce automation and more flexible production techniques to manufacturing can boost productivity by as much as 30%. Plus predictive maintenance of assets can save companies up to 12% over scheduled repairs, reduce overall maintenance costs by up to 30% and eliminate breakdowns by 70%.
These automation technologies will be driven by advanced sensors, big data technologies and intelligent machine applications that will harvest contextual data, manage, analyse and serve it back to the user or device as relevant information, all in real time. Look at the proliferation of mobile devices using intelligent software, traditional computers, big data servers, and IoT devices – you then have a picture of the magnitude of contextual data available. While the IIoT is still in its infancy, its ability to evolve will depend on how well this explosion in data is integrated and served across an ecosystem of devices.
Take one step back to take a giant leap forward
Each industrial revolution to date has failed to lay the groundwork that will successfully solve the challenges of data and device interoperability. The upshot of this is that there is a real danger of the industry trying to run before it can walk.
To avoid this, foundational integration challenges should first be addressed. Businesses still struggle to integrate their ERP with other core business applications due to the shift from batch to real-time integration so as to provide outbound data from the ERP to other systems. Many universal product codes that track trade items in stores are still not fully integrated with the customer journey data and profile, meaning that it’s harder to offer personalised offers based on preferences. In addition, electronic data interchange (EDI) – the abilities for companies to exchange documents electronically – has still not been resolved as message formats are still not standardised.
And while these very basic problems exist, a much larger, interoperability challenge looms. This is a lack of interoperability between devices and machines that use different protocols and have different architectures. The technology giants that were the early innovators of the Web including Google, Amazon and Apple have used their power to create closed ecosystems that have afforded them, and them alone control. This has led to other OEMs and partners following suit, creating their own standards for the development of applications based on proprietary operating systems or devices. This has given rise to a very real interoperability challenge: a lack of common standards with popular devices and systems that do not share data with each other if they are not all connected within the same ecosystem.
Technology giants need to find a way of cooperating that doesn’t threaten IP while also building a mutually beneficial open standard that encourages collaboration from a developer perspective. Some headway has been made by the non-profit Industrial Internet Consortium but it is not enough. These giants have the ability to decide how IIOT develops: it’s time to use that power to ensure that the IIOT will still foster innovation and collaboration.
The role of open architecture and web languages
Open technologies in an open architecture will go some way to helping businesses learn and develop systems that integrate. These include new open technology frameworks like NativeScript and React Native that help developers to develop IIoT apps that will work across systems and have the ability to share data across them all.
Businesses should encourage IIOT developers to use web languages to scale applications across any device or platform. JavaScript, a popular web language, is the only language that runs on every single platform. It is the only true “write once, run everywhere” language. Whether that’s directly on a JavaScript engine, or as an abstraction to native languages, the important part is that the language that the actual business logic is coded in stays the same.
Open for all
Walled gardens are probably the biggest threat to a successful IIoT. If industrial players want to take advantage and accelerate their own digital transformation to drive new business models, market opportunities and revenue, then they must take a closer look at open and secure technologies and start innovating for IIoT today.