The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
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Beverage Manufacturing Connectivity Before IIoT Was a Thing
Read more: Beverage Manufacturing Connectivity Before IIoT Was a ThingBetween 2012 and 2014, I worked on two large manufacturing connectivity projects in the beverage industry. At the time, nobody called them IIoT projects. They were described as manufacturing intelligence or production reporting initiatives. SAP MII happened to be the…
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Electronics Manufacturing Before IIoT. Lessons from a Global Rollout
Read more: Electronics Manufacturing Before IIoT. Lessons from a Global RolloutWhen I first stepped onto the shop floor of a global electronics connector manufacturer, the biggest challenge was not the machines. It was fragmentation. Each plant had its own way of working, built over years to support high-volume, high-precision manufacturing…
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Shop Floor Connectivity Lessons from a Titanium Dioxide Plant
Read more: Shop Floor Connectivity Lessons from a Titanium Dioxide PlantLong before “IIoT” became a standard term, manufacturing plants already had a real problem to solve. Data was everywhere on the shop floor, but nowhere at the same time. Control systems knew what was happening second by second. Labs held…
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SAP MII End of Life. What Comes Next for Your Career?
Read more: SAP MII End of Life. What Comes Next for Your Career?When I first started with SAP xMII back in 2005, I never imagined I’d see the day the platform would be sunset. Yet here we are. SAP MII, the tool I built a big part of my career on, is…
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Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0: Evolution or Revolution?
Read more: Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0: Evolution or Revolution?Lately, there’s a lot of talk about Industry 5.0. Some folks say it’s a revolution. Others say it’s just a logical next step after Industry 4.0. I’ve spent the last two decades living through these shifts on plant floors, in…
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Stakeholder Alignment for IIoT: IT, OT, and Quality on the Same Page
Read more: Stakeholder Alignment for IIoT: IT, OT, and Quality on the Same PageGetting IT, OT, and Quality to work together sounds like a reasonable goal. In practice, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with in more than 20 years in digital manufacturing. Every site, every program, every rollout. The same…
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Understanding 5G for IIoT. Use Cases, Limits, and Reality
Read more: Understanding 5G for IIoT. Use Cases, Limits, and RealityIf you follow industrial digitalization, you have probably seen 5G mentioned everywhere. Vendor slides, conferences, strategy decks. Sometimes it sounds like the missing link for Industry 4.0. Other times, it sounds like expensive hype. The truth sits somewhere in the…
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The Future of IIoT Applications: Where Industry Meets Innovation
Read more: The Future of IIoT Applications: Where Industry Meets InnovationBack in 2005, when I first worked with SAP xMII, the idea of “smart factories” lived mostly in PowerPoint decks and a few brave pilot lines. Today, machines, data, and people are more connected than ever. But the future of…
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Why Edge Data Contextualization Is Key for AI in Manufacturing
Read more: Why Edge Data Contextualization Is Key for AI in ManufacturingIf you’ve ever tried to get meaningful insights from a plant’s data, you know the struggle. You wire up a sensor, push the data to the cloud, and… good luck figuring out if “Tag_123” is a temperature, a pressure, or…
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Top 10 Data Platforms to Watch in 2026
Read more: Top 10 Data Platforms to Watch in 2026If you work in manufacturing or industrial data, you already know how fast this space moves. Every year, there’s a new “must-have” platform, while the existing ones evolve, rebrand, or quietly add powerful new capabilities. After spending years working close…
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Closing the Loop: Agentic AI and IIoT in Self-Correcting Manufacturing
Read more: Closing the Loop: Agentic AI and IIoT in Self-Correcting ManufacturingIf you work in manufacturing today, you’re probably hearing a lot about “Agentic AI” and self-correcting systems. I’ve spent the last two decades watching factories evolve from islands of automation to fully connected, data-driven environments. We moved from PLCs talking…
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Top 10 OPC UA Servers to Watch in 2026
Read more: Top 10 OPC UA Servers to Watch in 2026Connecting machines is easy on paper. Doing it reliably, securely, and at scale in a real manufacturing environment is not. OPC UA servers sit at the center of that challenge. They are the layer that quietly determines whether your IIoT…