The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
Category: Career
Lessons, stories, and insights from my journey through Industrial IoT and Smart Manufacturing.
-
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…
-
IIoT Skills Gap: What Engineers Need to Learn to Stay Relevant
Read more: IIoT Skills Gap: What Engineers Need to Learn to Stay RelevantLet’s talk about the IIoT skills gap in 2025. It’s real. It’s growing. And it is now affecting production, quality, and delivery in very visible ways. If you work in manufacturing. As an engineer, a tech lead, or the person…
-
Retiring SAP MII: Closing a Chapter and Opening the Next One
Read more: Retiring SAP MII: Closing a Chapter and Opening the Next OneAfter spending almost twenty years working with SAP MII (before that, xMII), it feels strange to say goodbye. It was part of daily life for many of us. It solved tough problems, frustrated teams, and more than once saved a…
-
Lessons From 50+ SAP Digital Manufacturing Projects
Read more: Lessons From 50+ SAP Digital Manufacturing ProjectsIf you spend enough time in manufacturing, you realize the shop floor is the real test for any digital solution. Since 2005, I’ve worked on more than 50 SAP Digital Manufacturing (MII/OEE/PCo) implementations across more than 10 industries, from the…
-
What a Steel Mill Taught Me About Real-Time Manufacturing Intelligence
Read more: What a Steel Mill Taught Me About Real-Time Manufacturing IntelligenceIf you want to understand what real-time intelligence really means in manufacturing, spend a day in a steel mill. I learned more about data, people, and decision-making in that noisy, hot, and relentless environment than in any classroom or conference…
-
This Is Why I’m Still Fascinated by IIoT
Read more: This Is Why I’m Still Fascinated by IIoTIf you ask me why IIoT still fascinates me after all these years, I could list technologies, architectures, or buzzwords. But honestly, it’s not about that. What keeps me hooked are the real, messy, and sometimes frustrating stories behind every…
-
What IIoT Consulting Really Looks Like: Stories, Lessons, and a Bit of Reality
Read more: What IIoT Consulting Really Looks Like: Stories, Lessons, and a Bit of RealityLet me tell you what IIoT consulting has really been like for me—across automotive, metals, pharma, food, and a few other places where things get built, mixed, or assembled. I’ve been at this since before “Industry 4.0” was a thing,…
-
My First Real IIoT Project: Making Automotive Plants Smarter
Read more: My First Real IIoT Project: Making Automotive Plants SmarterIf I had to pick one project that truly started my Industrial IoT journey, it would be this one. Back in 2017, I was helping a large global automotive parts manufacturer — one of the top 10 worldwide — modernize…
-
From SCADA to Cloud Analytics: The Evolution of Shop Floor Data I’ve Witnessed
Read more: From SCADA to Cloud Analytics: The Evolution of Shop Floor Data I’ve WitnessedIf you’d told me in 2005 that one day I’d be streaming millions of shop floor data points to the cloud, running AI on them, and visualizing everything in real time from anywhere in the world, I’d have probably laughed.…
-
The Project That Won Two Awards and Nearly Broke My Team
Read more: The Project That Won Two Awards and Nearly Broke My TeamIf you’ve ever been part of a major digital transformation in manufacturing, you know the feeling: the thrill of building something big, and the stress when the wheels start to come off. This is the story of the SAP MII…
-
Building Your First IIoT Smart Manufacturing Practice: A Playbook from Zero to Scale
Read more: Building Your First IIoT Smart Manufacturing Practice: A Playbook from Zero to ScaleI built my first Smart Manufacturing practice in 2006. I had zero direct reports, no budget, and honestly, no real idea what I was doing. Twelve years later, that practice was generating millions in annual revenue across three continents. Then…
-
What I Learned Building a Smart Manufacturing Portfolio for Consulting
Read more: What I Learned Building a Smart Manufacturing Portfolio for ConsultingCreating a Smart Manufacturing or Digital Manufacturing portfolio for a consulting company is one of those things that sounds simple on paper but is anything but in real life. Over the past two decades, I’ve built and led practices from…