The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
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Five Conversations That Changed How I Approach IIoT Projects
Read more: Five Conversations That Changed How I Approach IIoT ProjectsSome of the biggest changes in how I work didn’t come from reading a whitepaper or going to a conference. They came from conversations. Quick ones, sometimes. A comment over coffee, a pushback during a design review, a frustrated operator…
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AI Enabled by IIoT: Building the Factory of the Future
Read more: AI Enabled by IIoT: Building the Factory of the FutureMost conversations about AI in manufacturing skip the hardest part. They jump straight to dashboards, copilots, and predictions, but forget to ask one simple question. Where does the data come from? I’ve spent years connecting machines, historians, SCADA systems, and…
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The Trust Gap in Industrial AI
Read more: The Trust Gap in Industrial AIImagine this situation. A team spends months building an AI use case. The model looks strong in workshops and dashboards. The recommendation goes live on the plant floor. Then operators ignore it. Not because they are against technology. Not because…
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Digital Twins in IIoT. Where Physics-Based Models Fit
Read more: Digital Twins in IIoT. Where Physics-Based Models FitA lot of confusion around digital twins comes from one simple thing. People mix up the twin itself with the models inside it. They are not the same. A digital twin is a structure. A container that connects data, context,…
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Smart Manufacturing Starts with Dumb Questions
Read more: Smart Manufacturing Starts with Dumb QuestionsIf you want a smart factory, start by getting comfortable asking dumb questions. Not “dumb” like careless. Dumb like simple. The kind of question you might avoid because you think you should already know the answer. After years working across…
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AIoT-Driven Autonomous Systems in Manufacturing. What Actually Works
Read more: AIoT-Driven Autonomous Systems in Manufacturing. What Actually WorksAIoT. Artificial Intelligence combined with the Internet of Things. It is no longer just a buzzword. It is quietly changing how plants, labs, and production lines operate. I have spent more than two decades connecting machines, systems, and people across…
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Digital Transformation: The Human System Behind the Technology
Read more: Digital Transformation: The Human System Behind the TechnologyI have spent most of my career around what people usually call the “hard” side of manufacturing technology. Machines. Networks. Data pipelines. MES screens. OPC UA tags. MQTT topics. Historians. Systems that can be diagrammed, measured, and optimized. Yet the…
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Why i3X Matters for Industrial Data Interoperability
Read more: Why i3X Matters for Industrial Data InteroperabilityIf you’ve spent any time in manufacturing IT, you’ve probably lived through the same story more than once. A machine gets connected. Data flows into a historian or a SCADA system. A dashboard gets built. Everyone is happy for a…
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AI-Ready Data. How UNS and Sparkplug B Set You Up for Manufacturing AI
Read more: AI-Ready Data. How UNS and Sparkplug B Set You Up for Manufacturing AII’ve noticed something funny about “manufacturing AI.” The AI part gets all the attention. The real success or failure usually happens much earlier, in the boring part. How you name data. Where you publish it. Whether anyone can trust it.…
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MCP for IIoT. When “Chat With Factory Data” Became Engineering
Read more: MCP for IIoT. When “Chat With Factory Data” Became EngineeringFor a long time, “chat with your factory data” felt like a demo trick. You know the kind. Someone types “What’s my OEE today?” and a bot answers with a nice sentence. It looks impressive. Then someone asks a real…
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ProveIt! Conference 2026. Real ROI with Abelara, Tupinix, and Axilon
Read more: ProveIt! Conference 2026. Real ROI with Abelara, Tupinix, and AxilonAt ProveIt! Conference 2026, I sat through a session that felt more like a plant-floor working session than a tech pitch. It was framed as a live, fictionalized case study. The company was Cappy Hour Bottling. The names were fictional.…
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CESMII and I3X at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Making Interoperability Real
Read more: CESMII and I3X at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Making Interoperability RealI have been around manufacturing IT long enough to see the same movie play out. A site wants digital transformation. They buy a few tools. They connect some machines. They build some dashboards. Everyone celebrates for about six months. Then…