Industry 4.0 & IIoT
Unified namespace, protocols, digital twins, and MES — explained from the controls layer up.
Industry 4.0 connects the plant floor to the enterprise. This hub explains the architecture (ISA-95, the Purdue model, the unified namespace), the protocols that move the data (OPC UA, MQTT/Sparkplug), and what sits on top — digital twins, MES, and analytics — always tracing the path back to the PLC.
Architecture & Models
What Is a Unified Namespace?
A single source of truth for plant data, and how MQTT enables it.
ISA-95 Explained
The automation hierarchy levels and MES integration.
The Purdue Model
Levels, the IT/OT DMZ, and segmentation for OT security.
Edge Computing in Manufacturing
Processing near the machine, edge vs cloud, and use cases.
IIoT Protocols & Data
What Is Sparkplug B?
The MQTT spec for IIoT — topics, Protobuf, birth/death certificates.
MQTT vs Sparkplug B
Topic structure, payloads, and state management.
MQTT Sparkplug vs OPC UA
Pub/sub vs client/server, and when to use each.
OPC UA PubSub Explained
How publish/subscribe differs from client/server.
What Is a Process Historian?
Time-series storage and how PLC/SCADA tags get logged.
Digital Twin, MES & AI
Digital Twin in Manufacturing
Types, use cases, and the plant-floor data path.
Digital Twin vs Simulation
Models what could happen vs mirrors what is happening.
What Is the Digital Thread?
Connected data across a product lifecycle.
SCADA vs MES vs ERP
What each layer does and how they connect.
MES vs ERP
Shop floor vs enterprise, via the ISA-95 hierarchy.
AI Quality Inspection
How deep-learning vision finds defects rules-based vision misses.