The manufacturing industry has consistently used technology to fuel innovation, production optimization and operations. Now, with the combination of edge computing and AI/ML, manufacturers can benefit from bringing processing power closer to data that, when put into action faster, can help to proactively discover of potential errors at the assembly line, help improve product quality, and even reduce potential downtime through predictive maintenance and in the unlikely event of a drop in communications with a central/core site, individual manufacturing plants can continue to operate.

But this revolution of process and data requires many complex systems: sensors, line servers, wireless gateways, operational dashboards, servers and tablets for the maintenance teams on the floor to monitor the whole system. Unlike the factory systems of the past that were custom built and managed by operations technology (OT), the desired approach to support use cases that not only collect, analyze and act on machine, plant, and factory floor data in real time is to do so in a standardized manner.

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