The challenges of building an IIoT application

There are many challenges to building IIoT applications, such as a lack of network connectivity due to the remote location of industrial plants. Using a proper Edge Gateway design is essential in mitigating this challenge. Getting access to data from equipment sensors is a challenge, due to the disparate equipment types from many different manufactures. Using protocols such as Modbus and OPCUA will help mitigate some of these connectivity challenges.

Industrial equipment, such as jet engines and power turbines, produces very large volumes of data in a short amount of time. For example, on landing, a jet engine alone generates up to 1 TB of data. This data needs to be processed and insights gathered from it. To provide data security at all levels, from edge to cloud, is a challenge, therefore careful design decisions should be made regarding security.

Modeling industrial assets, such as jet engines and power turbines, are the foundation of a successful IIoT application. Asset models typically classify complex assets along with their various characteristics. Once this has been properly done, various algorithms can be applied to get insights from the assets. Challenges include the following:

• How to store huge numbers of assets and related objects
• How to define huge numbers of relationships between assets and other objects
• How to organize and make sense of them
• How to discover and query relationships among them
• Modeling requires a deep level of industrial equipment and domain knowledge and collaboration with industry experts

Developing analytics targeted for a specific asset is another challenge, and this requires deep domain knowledge as well as knowledge of the equipment. New general-purpose predictive algorithms such as anomaly detection and K-Cluster analysis are available for their application.