You can’t escape the buzzwords. The Internet of Things. The Industrial Internet of Things. Edge Computing. Industry 4.0. Big. Data. Every practitioner has their own, slightly different definition of what these terms mean—a fuzzy cloud of vague meaning. I’d like to point out a gaping hole that most of these definitions miss and shift how you think about the connected technologies you use as a quality practitioner. If you take away one thing, I hope it’s this: it’s the combination of people with the Internet of Things that creates a holistic solution for the shop floor.
Since before computer time began, the internet was about connecting “things”: servers to servers, servers to computers, and the fundamentals of the backbone technologies which make it all possible have remained largely unchanged. What has changed—and at a relentless pace—has been the exponential increase in computing power and the exponential decrease in its cost. Though the “Internet of Things” itself may be a misnomer, IoT is driven by this macro trend, and with computing devices smaller and less expensive to deploy, hardware and software makers are searching for new uses.