Systems development for the industrial IoT: challenges from Industry R&D projects

Industrial paradigms such as Industry 4.0 (I4.0), also known as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), provide an insight into the use of underlying Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in an integrated manner. In order to follow the IoT vision and gain the inherent benefits, industrial information systems providers have been modernizing their solutions. However, the complexity of such systems has been proving an obstacle in developing efficient solutions. Following the trends of the industrial IoT including Smart Manufacturing, Connected Factories, and Factories of the Future, industrial and academic projects have also been aiming at developing better solutions for IIoT-related projects. Such solutions typically heavily rely on interoperability requirements between sensors, actuators and other IoT-based diverse smart devices toward, for example, supply chain and production management services such as ERP, MES, and SCADA. This chapter identifies challenges in developing IIoT solutions, based on recent R&D projects. Such identification, in turn, contributes to proposing opportunities, challenges, methodologies, and approaches for the analysis, design, implementation, and deployment of R&D projects. This is specifically so when developing interoperable solutions for the IIoT domain, mainly concerning the applications of the IoT and services to the manufacturing industry.This work was developed within the projects IMP_4.0: Integrated Management Plaftorm 4.0 (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-009147) and UH4SP: Unified Hub 4 Smart Plants (Project ID 017871), under Portuguese National Grants Program for R&D projects (P2020 –SI IDT), COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, project “programa mobilizador PRODUTECH-SIF – Soluções para a Indústria do Futuro” under reference POCI-01-0247-FEDER-024541, co-funded by Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), through Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), and by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019