Living life on the edge.Martin Gale Master Inventor and CTO for Industrial Sector, IBM UK and Ireland

@martinjgale

In the beginning, we did things the hard way.

Most expensiveLeast expensive

Connected sensors moved the boundaries of enterprise systems and “the edge” became a thing.

Remote sites Headquarters

e.g. MQTT

Edge of the network

There are some important factors we learned from this.

Impact on enterprise systems

design and capacity

The cost of remote communications

Latency between sense and respond.

Good old fashioned common

sense.

Capable devices, capable edge.

HeadquartersRemote sites

e.g. MQTT

Shift towards actionable insight. More efficient use of comms.

Autonomy of remote sites. More possibilities.

What we do at the edge varies in complexity.

Complexity

Filtering/aggregation

Media analytics

Com

pute

pow

er Stream analytics

Data mediation and flow control

Application/device

integration

Very few IoT reference architectures break the edge down.

Control Code Local applications

Analytics Models

Sensor SDKs Back-end SDK

Application Runtime

Wide Area Network

Local Area Network

Assets

Sensors and Actuators

Loca

l Mon

itorin

g an

d

Man

agem

ent

Rem

ote

Mon

itorin

g an

d M

anag

emen

t

Phys

ical

Sec

urity

Devic

e Pl

atfo

rm

Secu

rity

Device

Device installation and maintenance

Device and asset management

Technology

Organisational

Who can access the running box?

How?

Who installs and fixes the device?

How do we apply fixes remotely?

What do we build our applications

out of?

What type of device is really needed?

The edge applies to multiple areas of “Industry 4.0”.

Flexible manufacturing Internet of People and Things

Autonomous systems Analytics and cognitive

Internet of services

In manufacturing, halted production costs big money.

Many manufacturers only know when production will halt when it happens!

per minute£10ks 5-10

minutes a day

Incremental use of the edge helps reduce risk of lost production.

Spot the trend and automatically

respond

Understand the trend and its context

A hybrid of analytics on the cloud and edge enable a smarter factory.

sound, vibration, temperature

Synthesis of readings indicates head will break

within 24 hours

Triggers creation of work order for that night’s planned

maintenance window

Re-routes high priority work order to another cell in

the meantime

Thank you!