2015 IIoT, Industry 4.0, Information Integration Study

2015 Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Information Integration Study

Amanda Pelliccione
11/10/2015

Respondents to the Control Engineering 2015 Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 & Information Integration Study have identified several high-level findings impacting control systems today:

IIoT, Industry 4.0

  1. Familiarity: Six in 10 respondents are “very” or “somewhat” familiar with the IIoT framework, while only 33% are familiar with the Industry 4.0 platform.
  2. Future funding: On average, respondents expect funding levels at their facilities to increase over the next year by 32% as a direct result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions.
  3. Product areas: The top three product areas expected to improve as a result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions are human-machine interface hardware, operator interface, control panels, alarms, annunciators, etc. (45% IIoT, 35% Industry 4.0); computers, industrial PCs, PC-based control (44%, 33%); and programmable logic controllers, programmable action controllers (40%, 37%).
  4. IIoT vs. Industry 4.0: Forty percent of respondents’ facilities are currently using elements of both IIoT and Industry 4.0, while 20% say IIoT better fits their situation, and 16% say the same of Industry 4.0.

Information integration

  1. Integrated levels: Seventeen percent of organizations’ manufacturing floors (Level 1) and advanced manufacturing control (Level 2) are highly integrated. Another 9% report Level 2 and enterprise (Level 3) to be highly integrated, and only 8% cite the same level of integration between Levels 1 and 3.
  2. Lack of integration: The most popular reasons for low levels of integration at respondents’ facilities are an unwillingness to assign resources/benefits are not recognized and the difficulty and cost of implementation.
  3. Benefits: Some benefits from recent integration projects include better support for decision making (47%), faster decision making (39%), and better control of resources (39%).
  4. Challenges: One in four respondents have found a lack of budget to be the top challenge when integrating operations, followed closely by confusion over project scope and/or benefits.

Access the full 2015 Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 & Information Integration report for additional findings.

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