Industrial IoT & Edge Computing – Overview

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When you rely on netFIELD, you’re profiting from Hilscher’s years of experience in industrial communication and automation solutions for the proven implementation of IT-OT convergence and Industry 4.0 solutions. Scaling Industrial IoT to larger numbers of machines, edge gateways, and edge software components is a challenge that is often underestimated.

Operating and managing edge gateways and the edge computing applications that run on them requires regular maintenance. This includes the operating system, distributed software, IIoT data streams and integration with automation networks. Another challenge is the acquisition of data for IIoT business models such as predictive maintenance, remote monitoring and anomaly detection. Such new data-driven services are especially important when it comes to retrofitting brownfield installations to make them fit for the future.

The netFIELD device management platform from Hilscher is a reliable and scalable platform for implementing your own Industrial IoT solution at the IT-OT edge or a hybrid – connected to the cloud or isolated as on-premise. Create your own device management and data acquisition solution with our management platform, containerized applications and powerful edge gateways.

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Which use case do you want to implement? Are you a machine builder who wants to provide new services and smart machines to your customers and therefor are looking for a tool to manage edge components close to your machine? Or are you a plant operator who wants to gain more information about the status of your production machines and searching for IIoT retrofitting solutions? We have solutions for both of it:

Which use case do you want to implement? Smart machine services or IIoT Retrofitting?

Device Management for Smart Machine Services

Enhance your machines with smart services. We provide you with the edge infrastructure to run and manage your smart machine services. To implement your smart services at the edge, we offer you:

netFIELD Cloud – our device management solution to manage your edge devices and software applications. Manage edge devices and centrally roll out your edge applications with low effort, high convenience, and CRA compliant.
Industrial edge gateways – running with our secure, industry-hardened netFIELD OS.

Data Acquisition in Brownfield Plants and Machines

If you want to utilize the data from your plants and machines for improving productivity, quality and transparency, Hilscher offers the right products to get access to your shopfloor data:

Industrial edge gateways – with several interface options from real-time ethernet (e.g. PROFINET or EtherCAT) to serial interfaces (e.g. Modbus) and standard Ethernet.
Plug & play software applications for data acquisition (netFIELD Apps) – configure your data access instead of writing code yourself.

netFIELD Device Management

The netFIELD edge management platform is a reliable and scalable cloud platform for implementing your own Industrial IoT solution at the IT-OT edge or a hybrid: from remote maintenance of machines and predictive maintenance to new data-driven service business models. netFIELD supports both IIoT retrofitting and completely redesigned solutions.

When you rely on netFIELD, you’re profiting from Hilscher’s years of experience in industrial communication and automation solutions for the proven implementation of IT-OT convergence and Industry 4.0 solutions. Scaling Industrial IoT to larger numbers of machines, edge gateways, and edge software components is a challenge that is often underestimated.

Operating edge gateways and the edge computing applications that run on them requires regular maintenance of the operating system, distributed software, IIoT data streams and integration with automation networks. Further requirements arise from the cyber security regulation (CRA and NIS-2).

Go to our netFIELD Device Management product overview

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Secure Edge Gateways

Edge Gateways from Hilscher are intelligent data transmitters between the automation level and the information technology level. They aggregate, handle or transmit additional IoT information of your production process completely autonomously. This is done either locally or in combination with a cloud in order to monetize insights gained from it according to demand.

The Edge Gateways build on Docker technology and, together with the Hilscher Cloud platform, form a powerful tool for the optimal distribution and management of software for your device fleets or globally distributed machines. But also a combination with cloud solutions from other companies is possible.

For use cases that require a direct connection of sensors, a dedicated IO-Link master is also available. This combines sophisticated device management and computing power at the edge with the proven IO-Link technology. This means that brownfield plants, for example, can be equipped with modern sensor technology in no time at all.

Go to our Edge Gateway product overview

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Industrial Communication Apps

Our netFIELD IoT ecosystem is built on Docker container technology that lets you package software applications to run quickly and reliably in different environments.

You can rely on our turn-key Docker containers for your own IoT environment. Our focus is on providing you with gateway containers for your communications infrastructure. With netFIELD you can aggregate and transfer data transparently and in compliance with official standards.

We have the right app container for your edge solution—from public cloud platform connectors such as AWS or Microsoft Azure to local applications such as an MQTT data broker or monitoring applications. With our containers you can also collect and make use of machine data in brownfield applications.

Go to our Industrial Communication App product overview