Some new concepts grow on you slowly, while some snap into place in a moment of clarification. Thinking about the Industrial IoT (IIoT), that moment – my IIoT “ah-ha” moment – came as I was reading a blog on how the IoT can transform the oil and gas industry.
The article follows the flow of fuel from an Alaska drilling station to your neighborhood gas pump. In it, Egbert Schroeer, Worldwide Managing Director, Process Manufacturing & Resources, Microsoft, explains how IIoT innovations have improved productivity and efficiency at every stage of the oil & gas production process. Reading about the data gathered from sensors attached to LACT skids scattered in far-flung locations, and how that information can be analyzed and made available in immediate electronic invoicing clicked for me. “That,” I thought, “is cool.”
In a series of video interviews, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) shares the IIoT insights from a handful of influential industry executives. Included in these “Voices of the IIC” videos are each person’s IIoT “ah-ha” moment.
Dirk Slama’s moment came as he was using power tools during a DIY project and imagined his incredulity if those tools started bossing him around. In his Voices of the IIC video, Slama, Director of Business Development at Bosch Software Innovations, went on to describe how, despite their bossiness, smart, connected tools make major improvements in the efficiency of aircraft factory assembly for Airbus.
For Cameron McNaught, SVP Emerging Technologies and Solutions, Fujitsu, his “ah-ha” moment came when he realized the clarifying difference between IoT and M2M. M2M, he explained, gathers information from machines and is all about “how many more clicks you can put through.” The quantity of information gathered for IoT data and the information from analytics that data can provide makes the connection to an entirely new ecosystem. “We’re now creating new laws that we’ve never seen before,” McNaught said.
Hear what other IIoT thought leaders, including Rose Schooler of Intel and Paul Didier of Cisco, consider their IIoT ah-ha moments in the “Voices of the IIC” video series on the IIC YouTube channel, and then share your ah-ha moment in the comments field, below.
