The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
Tag: Historian
A system designed to collect, store, and retrieve time-series data from industrial assets. It supports analysis, reporting, and long-term performance tracking.
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Real-Time Decisions: Lessons From Mining Operations
Read more: Real-Time Decisions: Lessons From Mining OperationsI never planned to work in mining. It just happened. Early in my career, a project came up at a metals and mining operation in Brazil, and I said yes. That decision gave me some of the most intense, real…
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AI Meets UNS: Practical LLM Uses on Industrial Data
Read more: AI Meets UNS: Practical LLM Uses on Industrial DataA few years ago, if you told me we’d be using large language models on top of plant data, I would’ve said: “Cool demo. Not sure it survives contact with a real site.” Now I’m more convinced. Not because LLMs…
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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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Why Your OEE Is Probably Wrong
Read more: Why Your OEE Is Probably WrongI’ve spent decades working with plant data, and if there’s one thing I wish more people understood, it’s this. Inconsistent machine data quietly ruins your OEE, often before you even know there’s a problem. I’ve seen this at small sites…
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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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The Five Things That Surprised Me About Industrial Data
Read more: The Five Things That Surprised Me About Industrial DataIf you’ve spent years in manufacturing IT, you know that industrial data isn’t just “data.” It’s messy, stubborn, and full of surprises. When I first started connecting machines and systems back in the SAP xMII days, I thought the challenge…
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My Experience with Oil & Gas SAP MII Implementations
Read more: My Experience with Oil & Gas SAP MII ImplementationsIf you’ve worked in Oil & Gas for a while, you know it’s a world apart — process industry, strict safety rules, and a patchwork of legacy systems that don’t like to talk to each other. Over the last two…
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Ignition 8.3: Leveling Up Industrial IoT
Read more: Ignition 8.3: Leveling Up Industrial IoTHere’s what really stands out to me: Ignition 8.3 isn’t just a “point release.” It’s a shift in how we think about deploying and managing automation software. The core lesson? If you want to run at enterprise scale — multiple…
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When Ignition 8.3 Broke the Ice
Read more: When Ignition 8.3 Broke the IceWhen I walked into the Ignition Community Conference this year, I could feel the buzz, and not just from the coffee. Everyone was talking about the new 8.3 release, and honestly, I was just as curious as anyone. After all…