10 industrial Internet terms you should know

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) released v2.2 of the Industrial Internet Vocabulary Technical Report, which provides Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) industry guidelines on vocabulary, architectures, security, analytics, connectivity and business strategy. IIC vocabulary definitions can be replaced for existing terms in use to ensure clarity for all readers.

The report includes a new definition for digital twin and eliminates virtual entity in favor of digital representation. Other terms added to the report include physical entity and physical entity of interest, describing a physical object, such as factory equipment that could be monitored or that is already being monitored by an IoT system. IoT sensor and IoT actuator also were added — both IoT devices but with dissimilar definitions.

“We update the Vocabulary Technical Report annually with new terms that align with key IIoT trends,” said Bob Martin, co-chair of the IIC Vocabulary Task Group, IIC Steering Committee Member, in a press release. “This year the report focuses on digital twins — software replicas of physical devices that run simulations of systems and leverage IoT, AI [artificial intelligence] and analytics technologies.”

The IIC plans to continue to revise the IIC IIoT Vocabulary Technical Report with definitions for new IIoT terms; 10 definitions that will have major implications for manufacturers that deal with the IIoT, have been highlighted:

1. Digital twin — Digital representation, sufficient to meet the requirements of a set of use cases note: in this context, the entity in the definition of digital representation is typically an asset, process or system.
2. Digital representation — Information that represents attributes and behaviors of an entity
3. Physical entity — Entity in the physical world that can be the subject of sensing and/or actuating
4. Physical entity of interest — Physical entity that is the subject of sensing and/or actuating
5. Stakeholder — Individual, team, organization or classes thereof, having an interest in the system of interest
6. IoT sensor — IoT device that observes one or more properties of a physical entity and converts those properties into information
7. IoT actuator — IoT device that can change one or more properties of a physical entity in response to received information
8. Semantic interoperability — Interoperability such that the meaning of the exchanged information can be understood by the participating systems
9. Syntactic interoperability — Interoperability such that the formats of the exchanged information can be understood by the participating systems
10. Security policy — Rules, directives and practices that govern how assets, including sensitive information, are managed, protected and distributed within an organization and its systems, particularly those which impact the systems and associated elements.

– Edited with information by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) by Chris Vavra, associate editor, Control Engineering, CFE Media and Technology, cvavra@cfemedia.com. The IIC is a CFE Media content partner.

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Keywords: Industrial internet, digital twin, Industrial Internet of Things

Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) vocabulary definitions help ensure clarity for all readers.

A digital twin is a digital representation, sufficient to meet the requirements of a set of use cases.

Security policy focuses on directives and practices that govern how assets are managed, protected and distributed.

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Can uniform vocabulary save time and reduce confusion among engineers and others?

Original content can be found at Control Engineering.

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