The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
Tag: Digital Transformation
The shift from manual and siloed processes to data-driven, connected, and automated ways of working. Focuses on using digital technologies to improve operations, decisions, and business value.
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Agentic AI on the Shop Floor: Real vs Hype in 2026
Read more: Agentic AI on the Shop Floor: Real vs Hype in 2026There’s a lot of noise around Agentic AI right now. If you’re in manufacturing, you’ve probably seen the demos. An AI agent that “autonomously optimizes your production line.” Another one that “self-heals equipment failures.” Sounds amazing, right? So let me…
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From Advising to Owning. The Shift Nobody Fully Prepares You For
Read more: From Advising to Owning. The Shift Nobody Fully Prepares You ForI spent about 16 years in consulting. Building practices, leading delivery teams, flying to client sites, presenting architectures, and handing over solutions. Then I moved to industry. Specifically, to a large global pharmaceutical company, leading IIoT architecture from the inside.…
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Communicating Edge Contextualization and Unified Namespace to Leadership
Read more: Communicating Edge Contextualization and Unified Namespace to LeadershipThe team had a problem. Not technical this time. They needed to explain Edge Contextualization and Unified Namespace (UNS) to senior leaders who did not care about protocols or data models. The audience knew their factories well. Directors, VPs, plant…
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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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What I Took Away from ProveIt! 2026. A Reset in Expectations
Read more: What I Took Away from ProveIt! 2026. A Reset in ExpectationsI have been to a lot of manufacturing events over the years. Some are useful. Some are basically a sales funnel with better coffee. This one felt different. What I liked most is that the conference actually tried to prove…
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My Expectations for the ProveIt! Conference 2026
Read more: My Expectations for the ProveIt! Conference 2026I’m heading to ProveIt! Conference in two weeks. February 16–20 in Dallas. It’s practically in my backyard. No flights. No hotels. Just me, my car, and five days of IIoT demos, vendor sessions, and hopefully some useful conversations with people…
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AI, IIoT, and the Knowledge Leaving the Shop Floor
Read more: AI, IIoT, and the Knowledge Leaving the Shop FloorLet’s talk about something nobody really wants to admit. Most plants are sitting on a ticking time bomb. Decades of operator know how are about to walk out the door as experienced people retire. The machines and systems might look…
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Unified Namespace (UNS) as the Architectural Foundation for IIoT
Read more: Unified Namespace (UNS) as the Architectural Foundation for IIoTIf you want to talk about making factories smarter and more connected, you have to talk about Unified Namespace. I’ve been working with industrial data for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen many architectural patterns come and go in…
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The Hidden Cost of Cloud-Native IIoT: What the Vendors Won’t Tell You
Read more: The Hidden Cost of Cloud-Native IIoT: What the Vendors Won’t Tell YouEveryone talks about cloud-native IIoT like it’s free money. Just lift your shop floor data to the cloud, connect a few APIs, and boom. Instant insights, zero infrastructure, pay as you go. I’ve been leading IIoT platform evaluations and architecting…
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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…