Making IoT Run

Abstract

This article describes how today's manufacturing environments are characterized by an increasing demand for individual products and constantly more product variants. Concomitant, developments in the fields of IT, robotics and artificial intelligence allow the realization of smart systems, which means networked, self-learning, self-regulating and versatile production systems to control this complexity. These developments are referred to as industrial IoT that is acknowledged as “next big thing” in production. Firms face the challenge of lacking guidelines for implementing IoT solutions. Neither the technological prerequisites nor generally applicable procedures for realizing an appropriate technological maturity level of the system-to-be exist. Addressing this deficit, a framework is introduced which systematically implements IoT within manufacturing. The framework presents a guideline for the establishment of structural system understanding, the determination of the target system's technological maturity level from a customer's perspective and, building on this, design implications for smart manufacturing.