The Smart Manufacturing and IIoT Division (also known as SMIIoT) is the newest and fastest growing division of ISA aimed at helping our members grow professionally and technically. The primary goals of SMIIoT are to provide clarity around these ever-evolving spaces, develop useful technical content, develop standardized approaches to solve critical problems, and provide a forum for networking and collaboration. ISA's understanding and focus of Smart Manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will continually evolve to adapt to the high level of activity and interest throughout the worldwide community, constant developments of new technologies, new applications, and new concepts from most of the major hardware manufacturers, solution providers, businesses, research institutions, and even governmental agencies.
What is IIoT?
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a subset of a much larger concept known as the Internet of Things (IoT). At a high level, IoT is a network of interrelated intelligence devices, computers, machines, and objects that are capable of transferring data without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. The application of IoT 'Industrial' use cases refers more specifically to interconnected control systems, sensors, instruments, industrial assets, computers and people. IIoT enables intelligent industrial operations using advances data analytics resulting in transformational business outcomes. The scale and span of IIoT can be massive, easily resulting in deployments reaching in to the thousands, if not tens of thousands of individual endpoints. When properly utilized and optimized, it can be one of the largest enablers for smart manufacturing.
What is Smart Manufacturing?
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines Smart Manufacturing Systems as "fully-integrated, collaborative manufacturing systems that respond in real time to meet changing demands and conditions in the factory, in the supply network, and in the customer needs." Thus smart manufacturing is an ecosystem which enables factories, warehouses, supply chains, etc. to be fully integrated and agile to fulfill customer demand for product or service delivery. Although arguments can be made to differentiate between other bug buzzwords like "Industry 4.0" and "Digital Transformation", they are often used interchangeably.Regardless of the semantics, these concepts boil down to collecting and harnessing a tremendous amount of data to make better decisions; telling business leaders what to do and when to do it. The goal of most Smart Manufacturing initiatives, therefore, are to identify opportunities for automating operations and use data analytics to drive better agility, increase efficiency, improve quality, and reduce a company's time-to-market. What makes all this possible is the collective application of different cutting-edge technologies that make manufacturing more connected, more intelligent, and more dynamic.
Division Activities
- Create and collect technical resources for members (e.g. articles, whitepapers, case studies, tools, etc.)
- Publish quarterly newsletter for awareness of SMIIoT division activities and industry news
- Host technical webinars
- Support Smart Manufacturing & IIoT Conference
- Collaborate with ISA Districts and Sections to promote and disseminate relevant information
- Expand volunteering opportunities for further collaboration and networking
- Develop a network of Smart Manufacturing and IIoT partner organizations as resources to members
How to Join our Division?
Join us if you want to learn, contribute, network, and help build the Division to create a better world through automation.
You can join our Division at no additional charge. Please click here to add our Division to your membership.