The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
Category: Strategic Leadership
Perspectives on leading digital transformation and shaping long-term IIoT strategy.
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Five Conversations That Changed How I Approach IIoT Projects
Read more: Five Conversations That Changed How I Approach IIoT ProjectsSome of the biggest changes in how I work didn’t come from reading a whitepaper or going to a conference. They came from conversations. Quick ones, sometimes. A comment over coffee, a pushback during a design review, a frustrated operator…
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Smart Manufacturing Starts with Dumb Questions
Read more: Smart Manufacturing Starts with Dumb QuestionsIf you want a smart factory, start by getting comfortable asking dumb questions. Not “dumb” like careless. Dumb like simple. The kind of question you might avoid because you think you should already know the answer. After years working across…
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Digital Transformation: The Human System Behind the Technology
Read more: Digital Transformation: The Human System Behind the TechnologyI have spent most of my career around what people usually call the “hard” side of manufacturing technology. Machines. Networks. Data pipelines. MES screens. OPC UA tags. MQTT topics. Historians. Systems that can be diagrammed, measured, and optimized. Yet the…
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Why i3X Matters for Industrial Data Interoperability
Read more: Why i3X Matters for Industrial Data InteroperabilityIf you’ve spent any time in manufacturing IT, you’ve probably lived through the same story more than once. A machine gets connected. Data flows into a historian or a SCADA system. A dashboard gets built. Everyone is happy for a…
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CESMII and I3X at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Making Interoperability Real
Read more: CESMII and I3X at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Making Interoperability RealI have been around manufacturing IT long enough to see the same movie play out. A site wants digital transformation. They buy a few tools. They connect some machines. They build some dashboards. Everyone celebrates for about six months. Then…
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Building a Credible IIoT Business Case
Read more: Building a Credible IIoT Business CaseIf you’ve ever tried to pitch an Industrial IoT project to your CFO and felt like you were speaking a different language, you’re not alone. This situation comes up repeatedly in manufacturing organizations. The discussion often happens in small conference…
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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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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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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…
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Top 10 Data and Analytics Trends Transforming Manufacturing in 2025
Read more: Top 10 Data and Analytics Trends Transforming Manufacturing in 2025If you work in manufacturing, you’re probably tired of hearing how “data is the new oil.” I get it — but after years of connecting machines, data, and people, I can tell you: the right data and analytics tech really…
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The Power of Storytelling with IIoT Data
Read more: The Power of Storytelling with IIoT DataIf you’ve been in manufacturing for a while, you know the plant floor is noisy—not just with machines, but with data. Every sensor, robot, and PLC is constantly spitting out numbers. But here’s the thing: all that data is just…
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Managing Up, Down, and Sideways: The Hidden Skill of IIoT Architects
Read more: Managing Up, Down, and Sideways: The Hidden Skill of IIoT ArchitectsIf there’s one thing I wish more people understood about IIoT architecture, it’s this: the tech is hard, yes — but managing people up, down, and sideways is the real superpower. You can have the cleanest architecture, the best platform,…