Industrial IoT Solutions
Connected factory intelligence that turns scattered sensor readings into a single source of truth. We design the sensor-to-cloud pipeline, choose the right protocols, and wire it into systems your team already uses — without opening the plant network to unnecessary risk.
From Isolated Machines to a Connected Factory
Industrial IoT (IIoT) is the application of internet-connected sensors, analytics, and machine-to-machine communication to industrial processes. Unlike consumer IoT, IIoT has to survive electrical noise, vibration, temperature extremes, and decades-old equipment that was never designed to talk to anything — while meeting far stricter requirements for determinism, uptime, and safety. Done well, IIoT gives plant managers a real-time view of OEE, energy consumption, and machine health without waiting for a monthly report. Done poorly, it's a pile of dashboards nobody trusts and a new attack surface nobody secured.
We design IIoT systems the way we design control systems: start with the decision someone needs to make, work backward to the data required to make it, and only then choose sensors, gateways, and platforms — not the other way around.
IIoT Architecture
Data flows up through five distinct layers. Each one has a different job, a different failure mode, and a different vendor ecosystem.
Sensor Layer
Temperature, vibration, pressure, current, vision, and proximity sensors physically attached to machines — the raw source of truth on the plant floor.
Edge Layer
Local compute (industrial PCs, PLCs, edge gateways) that filters, buffers, and pre-processes data close to the source, enabling millisecond decisions without round-tripping to the cloud.
Connectivity Layer
The protocols and networks — OPC-UA, MQTT, cellular, industrial Ethernet — that move data reliably from edge to platform, often through a southbound/northbound gateway split.
Cloud / Platform Layer
AWS IoT SiteWise, Azure IoT Hub, Siemens Insights Hub (MindSphere), or PTC ThingWorx — where data is stored, contextualized as asset models, and made queryable at scale.
Application Layer
Dashboards, predictive maintenance models, OEE scorecards, and alerts — the layer where data actually changes a decision someone on your team makes.
Key Protocols & Standards
Protocol choice determines latency, security posture, and how easily new devices can join the network later.
OPC-UA
Platform-independent, secure information modeling standard for the factory floor. Carries rich semantic context (not just raw values), with built-in authentication and encryption — the modern default for PLC-to-platform communication.
MQTT
Lightweight publish/subscribe protocol built for unreliable, high-latency networks. Minimal bandwidth overhead makes it the standard choice for edge-to-cloud telemetry across thousands of devices.
AMQP
Advanced Message Queuing Protocol with guaranteed delivery and transactional messaging — used when data must never be dropped, such as financial or quality-critical batch records moving to ERP.
REST
Standard HTTP-based API pattern for connecting IIoT platforms to web dashboards, ERP systems, and third-party services where request/response interaction (not constant streaming) is the right fit.
In practice, the strongest architectures combine these rather than pick one: OPC-UA on the factory floor for rich, secure information modeling, bridged to MQTT for efficient cloud transport, with REST APIs connecting the resulting platform to ERP and MES. We've implemented this exact OPC-UA-to-MQTT bridge pattern across multiple plants to balance shop-floor fidelity with cloud-scale economics.
What We Connect
If it generates a signal worth tracking, we can get it onto your dashboard.
Machines & Equipment
Spindle load, cycle time, vibration signatures, and fault codes streamed directly from CNCs, robots, and packaging lines for condition-based monitoring.
Environment Sensors
Temperature, humidity, and air quality monitoring for cleanroom compliance, cold-chain integrity, and worker safety zones.
Energy Meters
Sub-metered electricity, compressed air, and water consumption per line or per machine — frequently the fastest-payback IIoT use case because savings show up directly on the utility bill.
Quality Systems
Machine vision results, gauge readings, and SPC data integrated into the same data pipeline as production telemetry for unified traceability.
Material Flow
RFID, barcode, and weight-sensor tracking through WIP, AS/RS, and AGV/AMR routes to eliminate manual inventory counts and locate bottlenecks in real time.
Legacy Equipment Retrofits
Non-networked machines fitted with current and vibration clamp-on sensors to bring decades-old assets into the same data fabric as new equipment, with zero PLC modification.
The Data-to-Insight Pipeline
Raw sensor data is worthless until it goes through five stages of refinement.
Raw
High-frequency, unfiltered readings straight off the sensor — noisy and unlabeled.
Cleaned
Outliers removed, gaps interpolated, units normalized across every device.
Contextualized
Tagged with asset hierarchy, shift, batch, and product so a number means something.
Predictive
Models trained on historical failure patterns flag at-risk equipment before it breaks.
Prescriptive
The system recommends the next best action — not just a warning, but what to actually do about it.
Security by Design
Every sensor you add is a potential entry point. We architect IIoT networks with security as a first-class requirement, not an afterthought.
IEC 62443 Compliance
Industrial automation cybersecurity standard covering security levels, zone/conduit segmentation, and lifecycle requirements for both system integrators and asset owners.
Zero-Trust Architecture
No device or user is implicitly trusted, even inside the plant network. Every connection is authenticated and authorized regardless of where it originates.
Network Segmentation
OT and IIoT traffic isolated into dedicated VLANs and DMZs, with one-way data diodes where appropriate, so a compromised sensor can't become a path into your control network.
Related Services
IIoT is the connective tissue between your control systems and your business systems.
Ready to Connect Your Factory?
Book a free factory assessment and get a custom IIoT roadmap within 48 hours.