The Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled disruptive transformation across multiple market segments, from consumers, businesses, agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing, and utilities to governments and cities. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a branch of the large-scale IoT, focusing on industrial applications such as manufacturing, oil and gas, and utilities.
While consumer IoT and Industrial IoT (IIOT) share the same technologies (sensors, cloud platforms, connectivity, and analytics), these are their main similarities. This article highlights some characteristics of IIoT that distinguish it from consumer IoT, and these differences must be considered by product managers and buyers when planning IIoT solutions.
10 key differences between the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the Consumer Internet of Things (IoT)
While many people believe that the main difference between consumer IoT and industrial IoT lies in their functionality, this is not the case. Consumer IoT devices may have the same functionality as industrial IoT devices, but they are still not considered industrial products.
For example, both consumer and industrial trackers collect and monitor heart rate information, but industrial trackers incorporate additional design parameters not found in consumer devices. The 10 key differences between the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the Consumer Internet of Things (IoT) are as follows:
◆Safety
◆Interoperability
◆ Scalable
◆Accuracy and precision
◆Programmable
◆Low latency
◆Reliability
◆Flexibility
◆Automation
◆Maintainable
As a product manager launching your first industrial solution, or a buyer considering consumer IoT solutions for industrial use, it’s important to understand these differences.
1. Safety
Security is critical for all IoT solutions, but industrial IoT solutions require even stronger security measures. Interruptions in high-volume production can result in massive losses, amounting to millions of dollars daily. Power grid failures can disrupt the economic activities of millions and jeopardize national security.
The Industrial IoT solution management process employs a secure and resilient architecture, dedicated chipsets, encryption and authentication, threat detection, and other advanced security measures to ensure system security.
2. Interoperability
Industrial IoT solutions must coexist with environments that have a large number of traditional operational technologies (OT), including SCADA, M2M, and other dedicated manufacturing execution systems. These traditional operating systems will not disappear; industrial IoT solutions must integrate with and support various protocols and datasets, and reliably collaborate with these manufacturing systems. Equally important, industrial IoT solutions must integrate with back-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
3. Scalable
Industrial networks are dedicated, large-scale networks that support thousands (or more) of controllers, robots, machinery, and other specialized applications. Industrial IoT solutions deployed into these networks must scale seamlessly, anytime, anywhere, to support tens of thousands of new sensors, devices, and controllers, as well as existing non-IoT devices. This support includes interoperability, scheduling, workflow integration, data collection, analytics, decision-making, and integration with manufacturing and business execution systems.
4. Precision and accuracy
Industrial operations demand higher levels of precision and accuracy. Automated, high-volume, high-speed manufacturing processes operate with millisecond-level synchronization, requiring quality assurance systems to detect minute changes and take immediate corrective action based on these measurements. In this environment, "good enough" is not feasible, leading to decreased efficiency, increased downtime, and lost revenue. Industrial IoT solutions must support "business as usual" operations that demand high precision and accuracy.
5. Programmable
From programmable logic controllers to machining equipment, everything is frequently reprogrammed and reconfigured to support new processes. This programming can be done on-site or remotely, and Industrial IoT solutions supporting industrial and manufacturing applications must offer the same flexibility and adaptability to support operations.
6. Low latency
In high-speed, continuous production systems, sensors monitor every aspect of operation; every second is critical. Anomalies must be detected promptly, and corrective actions initiated almost simultaneously. Any delay in detection, assessment, decision-making, and execution will be costly in terms of worker safety, product quality, costs, and lost revenue. Industrial IoT solutions must meet the low-latency requirements of certain industrial applications.
7. Reliability
Industrial systems will operate for a long time before being replaced, often for 20 to 30 years. They work in harsh environments, sometimes subject to extreme heat, cold, high vibration, pressure and dust, and may operate in remote locations far from headquarters.
Industrial IoT solutions may be subject to the same requirements: they must have robust hardware to support high availability, withstand high load cycles, and operate reliably within tolerances, day after day, with only downtime for maintenance.
8. Elasticity
Mission-critical industrial processes and systems cannot tolerate downtime (even service access), therefore, robust design is essential. A failure in one part of the system should not cause the entire system to stop operating. While operational capacity may be affected, backup systems can fill the gap, or these processes may be replaced by other functions of the system.
In mission-critical operations, industrial IoT solutions must be designed to support fault tolerance or resilience. From sensor failures to connectivity failures, industrial IoT systems and architectures must be able to quickly replace failures during use and still satisfactorily complete their processes and operations.
9. Automation
Many industrial processes are highly automated throughout, without human intervention. IoT solutions operating in industrial environments need to support a range of autonomous requirements. This may require building intelligence into edge devices, integrating control and automation logic in gateways, or incorporating deep learning capabilities into the system design. Additionally, it must be programmable and integrate with traditional or new manufacturing execution systems.
10. Maintainable
Industrial systems often need to operate reliably and predictably for many years under harsh conditions, and supporting this level of performance requires regular maintenance from both in-house and field service technicians. IoT solutions operating in industrial environments must be maintainable to sustain the required performance levels; the ability to maintain industrial IoT solutions throughout their entire lifecycle, from replacing sensors and updating firmware to configuring gateways and servers, is a fundamental requirement.
Key points
Functional differences are important, but they are not the only determining factor in whether an IoT solution is "industrial." The ten factors listed above must also be considered. In reality, both consumer IoT and industrial IoT solutions may encompass all of these factors, but they differ in their implementation details and methods.
Industrial processes place stringent demands on IoT solutions, and product managers must consider these additional factors in engineering design. They must understand the specific use cases and the environments in which the solutions will be deployed.
Today's industrial IoT solutions are constantly emerging and developing. The industrial IoT solutions provided by suppliers may not meet the needs of all industrial applications. Therefore, buyers of industrial IoT solutions must ask some key questions in order to find the right industrial IoT solution for them.
