Computing infrastructure is an ever-changing landscape of technology advancements. Current changes impact the way companies deploy Smart Manufacturing systems to leverage advancements.

The rise of Edge and Fog computing capabilities coupled with traditional industrial control system (ICS) architectures provides increasing levels of flexibility. Furthermore, time synchronized applications and analytics augment or in some cases minimize the need for larger Big Data operations in the Cloud, regardless of cloud premise.

Establishing an Operational Architecture with the flexibility in strategy to utilize distributed computing and virtualized servers creates a production environment to leverage people, process and technology in a scalable manner, without the need to lock into a specific vendor or solution construct. However, as many operations will rely on legacy systems to fit into an overall architecture, virtualized hosts, data management, and open API tools will be necessary to guarantee a future-proof production environment.

Read this research to learn:

• Production metrics and IIoT architecture impact
• Dynamics of Edge adoption
• Edge in Operational Architectures
• Why and how use cases should drive data architecture
• Recommendations for those considering, using, or expanding Edge capabilities