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What's Stopping the Internet of Industrial Things?

Is it even Needed?

There, I said it, is that controversial enough? It might be. You have likely heard of the Internet of Things (IoT) by now and what it is, "let's connect everything to the internet! so we then know what it is!" and my suspicion is, that it is not necessarily needed. Or perhaps the concept is just too big to comprehend how it applies right now, let us think about and discuss this, I suggest first we start small.

 

Starting Small

For a lot of people the first thought that comes to mind with IoT is making a smarter home via home automation. There is nothing more awesome than feeling in control and being informed whether your plants are in need of a water, if your home is secure or keeping a close eye on your front door via a camera when Amazon ring the doorbell. We have even read that a controlled sprinkler system allowed a home owner to save their premises from being burnt down where their neighbours suffered great losses. The success stories are slowly pouring in, we are surely better connected, are we not? We can even look after our pets. Though for every success story there is often a horror tale, but we shall not talk about cars (or Die Hard 4 and its hacked power plant).

 

However, when we are looking at the scale of the home, we have an isolated scenario, a sandbox, a location where frankly we can do whatever we like. Here in begins to lie the crux of the scale of IoT and its increase to a level where it could be considered to be applied to, let us say for example, a humongous steel production plant.

 

Thinking Big

I was introduced to industrial environments from a young age, my father being an industrial shift engineer working on the huge and heavy electronics of British Steel. Regularly I would hear tales of trudging up long ladders, getting covered in extra fine coke dust and crud, to take care of the electronics for a conveyor belt system that would put a shopping till to shame, and motors the size of a large living room with junction boxes the size of a human. So, too, came the tales of blast furnaces and metal working, but also of the systems that controlled these. From the computer systems that people sat at to systems which you would not hear about from home.

 

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) are the electronics that are the heavy duty, industrial armoured electronics against the elements and truly harsh conditions. Your typical Beaglebone Black would not cut it where a PLC can do the grunt work, (though with the industrial BBB we're getting better). This is what I see as the type of system which the Internet of Things is trying to replace or supplement in an industrial environment, and it is not going to be cheap to do so.

 

So just how do you go from a system that is setup to use PLCs to one that wants to be connected to the internet? Or is it already on the internet? Unfortunately for this information, my father retired from Corus as it was then known, before becoming Tata Steel and did not see what upgrades were done to the system.

 

However, I suspect that the engineers of this community may have seen similar or even more.

 

What is Stopping the Internet of Industrial Things?

You tell me! You do not have to be specific, I suspect that a number of people are under Non-Disclosure Agreements with their company, but let us be general about this shall we?

Parents

  • Reasons:-
    Poor internet infra

    Time Lag

    Reliability
    Security
    Other potential improvements before IoT?

     

    In my opinion, IoT has some potential in Industry but it would be Industry specific. Are we talking about connecting machines to IoT? There are industries requiring close supervision of things where seconds of delay can cause Fire/loss of life. Why? Because with such high Industrial Power all it takes is a few counts of over load to start a fire within a seconds. One cannot rely on Internet for that where even time lag is of more than seconds.

    Poor Internet Infra - In majority of Industrial regions in my country the Internet related infrastructure is not very reliable. In fact, main ISP providers use underground cables that are old and UBR based Wireless Links (let it be P2P or P2MP) are not very effective in providing continuous connectivity.

     

    Time Lag – Not to mention, Time. One of the most important factors in industry, & draws a fine line between safety|Mishap. One can understand If anything is going to internet Uplink/Downlink there is a time lag, so if process is critical and demands immediate actions one cannot trust such loss of time. I might be industry specific with this example but talking about general process in industry with such Passable built of machines and dis regard of safety in many ways. It happens here.

     

    Reliability - Well obviously related to the main internet structure here. How can one be assure of its industry working based on IoT (””)___(””) when the main pillar on which it is based is not reliable itself i.e. Internet infra?

    Security - Not the password crack type security but the security of the persons working in the premises with machines which are relying on internet for controlling actions.  

     

    Other improvements before IoT?

    Moreover, In India where majority of factories are Mid-scale factories there are so many area of improvements other than bringing IoT to it, so businessman best bet here will be first improving their factory conditions (such as bringing automation, using proper equipment to drive high power machines, measures to keep power consumption as low as possible etc.) seems much viable. 

    For example read below:-

    I remember something similar; I was called by my uncle to visit his factory (Pipe manufacturing plant) to advise him (technical point of view) how they can improve their production and safety within the factory. Also he was wondering if any improvement can reduce running cost.
    About the factory: The factory was totally based on man power right from unloading the raw material from the truck to the end loading finished product to the truck. All of the motors were directly connected to the three phase supply with the help of mechanical starter switch.
    So there was a lot of room for the improvement but that would costs lot of money (in tens of Lakh) so, he asked me for the major changes at that time. I suggested him following things (much more than this but let’s keep it short):-

    1. Process Automation –   80% of that factory could have been automated i.e. can be made to work automatically without human need. By using several processing units (PLC etc.) like heating up the machine in controlled, efficient manner (thus saving power) & preparing best quality product, Loading of raw material & unloading  to the processing machine automatically etc.

    2. AC drives – I recommended him to get an AC drive for all of the motors but condering money an important factor I convinced him to get AC drive for the major motor.  After a year there was some fault in it and AC drive got burnt. He ordered another one immediately. Using it for a year he came to knew how that single improvement was beneficial to his factory in many aspects.

     

    3. PF factor – Another factor they need to take care of was keeping an eye on the power factor, if it goes beyond 1 and even stays there for minutes, electricity department will be adding a penalty on that and that will be of thousands. 

    The point is, there were only few areas in which I could have recommended using IoT feature and that will be to keep an eye statistical record of material, PF factor monitoring & alarming system seems possible area in that particular industry other than that other improvements seems to be much reasonable.
    So I believe there are many other reasonable improvements first needed to be take care of before introducing IoT here. Local Wireless is already there but internet is not a feasible choice right now here.

     

     

    mudz

Comment

  • Reasons:-
    Poor internet infra

    Time Lag

    Reliability
    Security
    Other potential improvements before IoT?

     

    In my opinion, IoT has some potential in Industry but it would be Industry specific. Are we talking about connecting machines to IoT? There are industries requiring close supervision of things where seconds of delay can cause Fire/loss of life. Why? Because with such high Industrial Power all it takes is a few counts of over load to start a fire within a seconds. One cannot rely on Internet for that where even time lag is of more than seconds.

    Poor Internet Infra - In majority of Industrial regions in my country the Internet related infrastructure is not very reliable. In fact, main ISP providers use underground cables that are old and UBR based Wireless Links (let it be P2P or P2MP) are not very effective in providing continuous connectivity.

     

    Time Lag – Not to mention, Time. One of the most important factors in industry, & draws a fine line between safety|Mishap. One can understand If anything is going to internet Uplink/Downlink there is a time lag, so if process is critical and demands immediate actions one cannot trust such loss of time. I might be industry specific with this example but talking about general process in industry with such Passable built of machines and dis regard of safety in many ways. It happens here.

     

    Reliability - Well obviously related to the main internet structure here. How can one be assure of its industry working based on IoT (””)___(””) when the main pillar on which it is based is not reliable itself i.e. Internet infra?

    Security - Not the password crack type security but the security of the persons working in the premises with machines which are relying on internet for controlling actions.  

     

    Other improvements before IoT?

    Moreover, In India where majority of factories are Mid-scale factories there are so many area of improvements other than bringing IoT to it, so businessman best bet here will be first improving their factory conditions (such as bringing automation, using proper equipment to drive high power machines, measures to keep power consumption as low as possible etc.) seems much viable. 

    For example read below:-

    I remember something similar; I was called by my uncle to visit his factory (Pipe manufacturing plant) to advise him (technical point of view) how they can improve their production and safety within the factory. Also he was wondering if any improvement can reduce running cost.
    About the factory: The factory was totally based on man power right from unloading the raw material from the truck to the end loading finished product to the truck. All of the motors were directly connected to the three phase supply with the help of mechanical starter switch.
    So there was a lot of room for the improvement but that would costs lot of money (in tens of Lakh) so, he asked me for the major changes at that time. I suggested him following things (much more than this but let’s keep it short):-

    1. Process Automation –   80% of that factory could have been automated i.e. can be made to work automatically without human need. By using several processing units (PLC etc.) like heating up the machine in controlled, efficient manner (thus saving power) & preparing best quality product, Loading of raw material & unloading  to the processing machine automatically etc.

    2. AC drives – I recommended him to get an AC drive for all of the motors but condering money an important factor I convinced him to get AC drive for the major motor.  After a year there was some fault in it and AC drive got burnt. He ordered another one immediately. Using it for a year he came to knew how that single improvement was beneficial to his factory in many aspects.

     

    3. PF factor – Another factor they need to take care of was keeping an eye on the power factor, if it goes beyond 1 and even stays there for minutes, electricity department will be adding a penalty on that and that will be of thousands. 

    The point is, there were only few areas in which I could have recommended using IoT feature and that will be to keep an eye statistical record of material, PF factor monitoring & alarming system seems possible area in that particular industry other than that other improvements seems to be much reasonable.
    So I believe there are many other reasonable improvements first needed to be take care of before introducing IoT here. Local Wireless is already there but internet is not a feasible choice right now here.

     

     

    mudz

Children
  • in reply to mudz

    Hi Mudz.

     

    Thanks for your thoughtful response.

     

    You touch on a number of issues that need to be considered for an implementation of an IoT-enabled industrial control system.

     

    You address the question of the need for Industrial IoT in the proper context. The question isn't (as posed in the introductory portion of this post) is IIoT needed at all. Rather, there are a number of things you can do to improve your plant's productivity that are probably easier to implement than an IoT system and just as important. AC Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) are a great way to save energy and reduce operational costs. You don't need to drive them via the Internet to obtain operational and cost saving benefits. They are easier to repair than when I serviced them as a field engineer at Eaton. A 10 HP VFD is compact enough to be a swap out replacement nowadays, not like in the past. And the new flux vector control system optimizes motor performance very well. No need for the Internet for that.

     

    Poor Internet Infrastructure -- a reliable IP service is a basic requirement for an Industrial IoT control system. But even in the U.S., I've known some factories that aren't up to speed as far as their IP Service.

     

    Time Lag: process control is much more sensitive to delays than a consumer network, which can tolerate them. I believe the IEEE 802.1 standard (Time-Sensitive Networking) is still being worked on. This summarizes the current state of it: http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2014/tsn-nfinn-IEEE-TSN-Status-for-IETF-1114-v02.pdf

     

    Security: the security issues of critical infrastructure (mission critical applications) has just not been addressed enough IMHO. This alone will unfortunately limit the adoption curve of Industrial IoT.

     

    Reliability: I'm of two minds concerning this issue. A big part of what you've mentioned (e.g., a poor internet infra structure, etc.) But I think there is also a generational problem: how many older plant managers are willing to accept or even trust wireless sensor and control systems? Clearly, there needs to be a lot of education needed (change management) to get senior managers on board..