#SPS15 Solutions for the Industrial Internet of Things.

HMS Industrial Networks presented a number of new industrial communication innovations for the Industrial Internet of Things at the SPS/IPC/Drives Fair. The new solutions and prototypes enable communication between operational technology (OT) on the factory floor and Information Technology (IT) resulting in unprecedented efficiency gains.

The benefits of Industrial IoT
Building on 25 years of experience in industrial communication, HMS’s Industrial IoT solutions will be a game-changer for many machine builders and plant owners. For example, they will allow machines to communicate their operation status to IT systems enabling predictive maintenance. They will also allow machine builders to become service providers and sell maintenance as a service. IT systems can analyze information from real-time industrial systems and present KPIs and statistics from previously unattainable OT systems.

IT/OT Bridging solutions
New “edge connectivity gateways” enable access to OT information from the IT-level giving business intelligence systems unprecedented access to live information from production facilities. Among other things, HMS will present new gateways for connecting PROFINET and PROFIBUS to .NET on the IT level. Another piece of news is an “embedded IIoT” solution where integrated Anybus chips, bricks and modules open a direct channel to the IT level making the host machine “IIoT-ready.”

Cloud solutions
HMS’s proven and trusted Netbiter solution already connects thousands of drives, generators, UPSs and other OT-machines to the cloud where they can be monitored and controlled remotely. HMS now presents new solutions for connectivity to 3rd party clouds such as Thingworks, Oracle and SAP. Connection to these clouds can be made using HMS’s new IT/OT bridging solutions.

Industrial Networking
HMS’s current product portfolio for industrial networking is already connecting more than 3 million automation devices around the world. Many of these devices get connected to some kind of controlling system – a basic form of IIoT. At the SPS/IPC/Drives fair, HMS also presents a new OPC UA solution for the German “Industrie 4.0” initiative meaning that an OPC UA server is offered inside the Anybus communication solutions providing data from the factory floor.

“For us at HMS Industrial Networks, the Industrial Internet of Things is nothing new,” says Jörgen Palmhager, COO, at HMS Industrial Networks. “We have been ‘Connecting Devices’ for more than 20 years and enabled millions of machines to communicate with controlling networks. Through our HMS Labs initiative, we have been working with Industrial IoT for several years and while other companies are still discussing IIoT roadmaps, we are presenting actual prototypes, products and solutions – innovations which will provide substantial value as users can do predictive maintenance, KPI-follow-up, machine analytics, data mining, big data processing, production statistics and much more. Industrial IoT will be a game-changer for many automation companies and HMS is technologically very well positioned to help customers realize the promises of IIoT.”