The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market is expanding. More industries are making IoT technology part of their automation, workforce management initiatives, and customer experience.
Retail, healthcare, automotive manufacturing, and other industries are using the IIoT to benefit their business initiatives and planning. This affects how the IIoT may be used in the future.
Discover some of the IIoT trends that will impact manufacturing in 2023 and beyond.
Growing Popularity of Digital Twins
Digital twins offer more remote workforce flexibility by providing real-time updates on field devices. The detailed digital models use Internet of Things- (IoT) powered sensors to modify the digital model according to changes happening to the source object.
The demand for digital twins will increase due to failures and risks associated with the supply chain during the pandemic. The use of digital twins creates end-to-end transparency and traceability across the value chain. This allows what-if modeling to modify the planning based on current scenarios. Potential and actual issues can be quickly resolved to minimize downtime in production.
Increasing Functional Safety for Industrial Internet of Things Equipment
The IIoT tracks, alerts, and protects workers from unsafe working conditions. This increases manufacturers’ ability to protect their workforce. Other benefits include increased production efficiency and decreased pollution in the environment.
Multiple platforms and applications with the same functional safety implementation can be supported through the IIoT. This significantly increases the return on investment and the scalability and reuse of the software. As a result, manufacturers can increase innovation, lower costs throughout the supply chain, and protect against supply constraint issues.
Expanding Cybersecurity for the Industrial Internet of Things Surface
The growing connectivity of mobile devices, IIoT applications, and their users significantly increases the attack surface for cyber threats. As a result, cybersecurity safeguards must continuously increase.
Servers, routers, PCs, switches, and other information technology (IT) infrastructure connect through the IIoT to operational technology (OT) infrastructure. This means a cybercriminal can enter from IT and move to OT. Since OT device commands are unencrypted, exploitation is easier.
Once the cybercriminal is in the OT, they could, for instance, create dangerous pressure levels in oil or gas lines. Or, the cybercriminal could cause power outages or damage products from a production line.
As a result, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and other innovation will be used to provide increased cybersecurity for the IIoT. Also, cybersecurity standards will continue to evolve to increase effectiveness and decrease cost.
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