Whether exploring operational efficiencies in industrial automation or looking for digital transformation to drive business value in new ways, ADLINK Digital Experiments provide a secure and cost-effective place to innovate with IoT. Digital experiments help develop a comprehensive IoT business strategy and define a roadmap for implementing successful IoT solutions by thinking big, starting small and learning fast.

The industrial internet of things (IIoT) is the enabler for new types of business model that will increase the bottom line for businesses and improve the range of services they offer. Edge computing offers real-time insights and facilitates informed decision-making that ramps up your operational efficiency.

Full IoT solutions conventionally require significant investment, despite success rates for such projects only reaching 26 per cent, according to industry studies.

In response, digital experiments are a quick, repeatable and low-cost way to prove a business hypothesis around an IoT project. By following five simple steps, you can test the potential of possible IoT-based solutions, with none of the upfront costs and risk associated with a full commitment.

Think big

Manufacturers can start by considering problems to be solved, determine the processes that need to be changed and the benefits they hope to achieve. This will generate the maximum business value possible.

Start small

Operators can, with minimal upfront investment, take advantage of digital experimentation to collect and analyse valuable information. This helps to determine whether the projected outcomes, such as improved production quality and reduced labour costs, can actually be achieved.

Learn fast

As the saying goes: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Users should become comfortable with the idea of making mistakes, get accustomed to learning from them, and develop the resilience to keep trying.

Build an ecosystem

The IoT value chain encompasses protocols and connections, security, data streaming, equipment management, power control, data transfer, machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), edge analysis, cloud computing and many other complex links. Without a complete ecosystem of partners, an individual supplier will not be able to manage everything on its own.

Recognise the facts

The ultimate goal of IoT implementation is to explore data and identify valuable information, rather than perform technological experiments.

ADLINK Edge™ software releases the power of operational data and enables intelligent decision-making by streaming to the cloud to give access to deeper insight from advanced analytics, AI and machine learning. With no programming necessary, ADLINK Edge™ quickly connects previously unconnected operational equipment and sensors. Then, by tapping into native communication protocols, data can be captured and streamed at the edge. This data can then be streamed securely between devices, databases and to the cloud, enabling analysis and easy visualisation to inform decisions and optimise operations. All in real time.

ADLINK’s solutions include hardware, software and support elements and are all vendor-agnostic, built on open standards and using modular components which allow for easy integration with any existing IT and OT system. Users are also able to benefit from IoT expertise within ADLINK’s extensive partner ecosystem, which includes AWS, Azure, Google, Thingworx, IBM Watson, Intel and SAS.