Whitepaper offers key insights based on compilation of testbed outcomes

The Industrial Internet Consortium® (IICâ„¢), the world's leading organization transforming business and society by accelerating the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), published a new whitepaper, "A Compilation of Testbed Results: Toward Best Practices for Developing and Deploying IIoT Solutions." The whitepaper offers advice to companies embarking on an IIoT journey based on results from a compilation of IIC testbeds that have produced successful outcomes. The whitepaper also offers lessons learned about project initiation, planning and management, establishing the value of platforms, dealing with brownfield constraints or limited resources, deploying supportive technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), and mistakes to avoid.

"While IIC testbeds have specific goals tied to the business objectives of the vendors and end users who fund them, they have a lot in common with proof of concept and pilot projects. Companies embarking on other IIoT pilots and projects can learn a lot from them," said Jacques Durand, Co-chair of the IIC Digital Transformation Working Group, Director of Standards and Engineering, Fujitsu, and one of the lead authors of the whitepaper. "Testbed teams face similar risks and challenges during their deployment process and these are relevant to any IIoT pilot or project."

"Testbed learnings that pertain to IIoT development and deployment are often seen as by-products of a testbed," said Chaisung Lim, Chairman of Korea Industry 4.0 Association/Konkuk University and one of the lead authors of the whitepaper. "We call them IIC 'horizontal learnings' and these provide valuable insights on how to deploy IIoT, or utilize emerging technologies such as AI or digital twins, especially when correlated or reinforced by other testbeds."

Typical horizontal challenges shared by many testbeds include:

Project initiation - approaching management for funding an IIoT project
IT/OT mismatch - dealing with the cultural and human differences in information technology (IT) vs. operational technology (OT)
Human factors - including managing people's concerns about IIoT pilot/project risks and fears about job relevance
Other typical roadblocks - determining the IIoT technologies appropriate for the deployment context, dealing with limited resources an uncertain timeline, disruptive trials in production environment, integrating a diverse set of technologies and standards, developing analytics models without a large quantity of data, among others.
IIC testbeds are where the innovation and opportunities of the industrial internet - new technologies, new applications, new products, new services, new processes, new business models - can be initiated, thought through and rigorously tested to ascertain their usefulness and viability before coming to market. The IIC portfolio of testbeds includes nearly 30 testbeds, all in various stages. The authors interviewed many testbed sponsors and participants and the paper includes learnings from the following testbeds:

INFINITE (INternational Future INdustrial Internet Testbed) testbed
Track and Trace Testbed
Time Sensitive Network - Flexible Manufacturing testbed
Distributed Energy Resources Testbed
Urban Water Supply testbed
Smart Factory Web testbed
Manufacturing Quality Management testbed
Smart Manufacturing Connectivity testbed
Factory Operations Visibility and Intelligence testbed
Deep Learning Facility testbed
Smart Machine Learning for Predictive Maintenance testbed
The whitepaper, A Compilation of Testbed Results: Toward Best Practices for Developing and Deploying IIoT Solution, and a full list of members who contributed to it can be found on the IIC website here.

About the Industrial Internet Consortium
The Industrial Internet Consortium is the world's leading membership program transforming business and society by accelerating the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The IIC delivers a trustworthy IIoT in which the world's systems and devices are securely connected and controlled to deliver transformational outcomes. The Industrial Internet Consortium is a program of the Object Management Group (OMG). For more information, visit http://www.iiconsortium.org.

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