Electricity + Control March 2021

COMMENT

INDUSTRY 4.0 + IIOT

energy + information in industry

MECOSA (Pty) Ltd, sole business partner for Berthold in Southern Africa, specialises in critical measurement solutions for any process conditions. (Read more on page 3.)

The future of IoT T he Internet of Things – or the Industrial Internet of Things, or digital transforma- tion, or even 4IR – whatever you prefer to call it, is here and it’s big. Without showing my age too much, I fondly recall, as a young engineer in a Con- trol and Instrumentation Department, being terribly excited by mimic panels, 4-20 mA loops, multi-drop systems, heat-generating cabinets of whirring devices. And cabling that went on for kilometres, flashing lights and the like. Then the internet began to emerge and folk set about using it in the control environ- ment, trying to figure out how signals could be guaranteed to arrive at the designated receiver, and then how the intelligence of the system could be decentralised – allow- ing some decisions to be made in the field, and so on. PLCs were big, and computers began to infiltrate the plant progressively. Then we moved to industrial wireless communications – and I recall some of the angst accompanying that. And so it goes. Now our industries, our offices, even our homes bristle with super-smart devic- es that communicate seamlessly and truly empower control of the plant – whatever the plant may be. Even the car can be started remotely, if that works for you... What this emphasises is the prolifera- tion of data on any site – and the contin- ued importance of recognising that data without analysis is not particularly useful. We still need to extract the information from the data to make it of value to the related processes.

However, what the Internet of Things has done, of course, is bash down some of the barriers between the office and the plant, between plants separated by provincial boundaries, and even between internation- al locations. And dare we admit it – between our homes and our workplaces – the indus- tries in which we work. It has also meant that many of the issues and solutions, which once seemed relevant only to manufacturing or process plants, are now being used to manage commercial and business environments – with even your own smart device purporting to explain to you, quite often I might add, how efficient or effective you have been. The blurring of the lines between our per- sonal lives and our business lives has been profoundly influenced by this new normal – and the capacity to monitor and man- age many facilities, and indeed industries, remotely, is really pointing us to the next major developments. These developments will see the world of work change dramat- ically again – frankly, as we may not have imagined it could. The fact is, though, we will muddle through this as a species – and no doubt emerge stronger yet – in an age when smart devices will quite genuinely be a real exten- sion of ourselves, when our brains and our computers are tightly linked, and when we will be an integral part of the very process we aim to control. Interesting times ahead I think!

Editor: Leigh Darroll Design & Layout: Darryl James Advertising Manager: Heidi Jandrell Circulation: Karen Smith Editorial Technical Director: Ian Jandrell Publisher: Karen Grant Deputy Publisher: Wilhelm du Plessis

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Electricity+Control is supported by

Ian Jandrell PrEng IntPE(SA), BSc(Eng) GDE PhD, FSAAE FSAIEE SMIEEE

Electricity + Control MARCH 2021

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The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editor, SAAEs, SAEE, CESA or the Copper Development Association Africa