FEBRUARY 20228 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONDemystifying IIoT and Its Value to ManufacturingBy Craig Zedwick, Director Production Excellence and Automation, Cabot MicroelectronicsIn the late nineties, I worked for Eastman Kodak in their solvent recovery and synthetic chemicals division. They had a sophisticated Distributed Control System (DCS) so operators could run interconnected distillation towers from a central control room. The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system had graphics showing every valve status, which pumps were running, and whatever data we wanted to display from our thermocouples, flow meters, and online gas chromatographs. Back then, such systems were state-of-the-art, even though the internet was in its infancy, with AOL and FTP sites representing cutting-edge technology. Fast forward more than twenty years, and manufacturing control systems haven't changed that much. PLC ladder logic is still used at many companies. SCADA systems look better in most cases, but the control mechanisms are basically the same. So, what's the big deal about Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)?IIoT is a buzzword and can mean many things, depending on the context. For manufacturers, it describes an interconnected set of sensors, smart devices, and control systems that are also connected to the cloud and accessible via internet URL's. The purpose of this interconnected system is to collect, structure, and utilize large amounts of data to provide manufacturing value. For certain industries, the advancements made in the last 10-15 years have enabled small, customized production runs that have transformed the customer ordering and fulfilment process. But for manufacturers that are not focused on discrete parts, or on direct-to-consumer production, IIoT has may not have been on their minds until recently. The question to answer in this article is why these companies should embrace IIoT.If you are starting with a foundation of manufacturing processes controlled via DCS or advanced PLC systems, then IIoT may seem redundant. IIoT has many components, and several of them may already be in place at your company. The key is to understand the vision of IIoT and how you can integrate value-added elements into your current systems to achieve that vision.The IIoT vision is to democratize data such that every person in the company has access to the data they need when they need it and in the format they require. Everything else flows from this. On the manufacturing floor, if operators have access to real-time data, then they make better decisions. If the engineers and quality team can immediately pull data on maintenance activities, yields, variances, and so on, then they can take effective action to optimize and troubleshoot. If management can track costs and see real-time accounts and Craig Zedwick
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