Industrial Data Flow and Devices

In this chapter, we’ll take a close look at the equipment, devices, protocols, and software layers that manage industrial data along its path in the factory. We’ll start from the sensors and track the path of data until we reach the edge, which is the external boundary of the I-IoT data flow inside the factory. We’ll look at how industrial signals are generated and how they are managed, exchanged, and enriched by passing through the different levels of the CIM pyramid.

We’ll also consider what the main OT devices involved in each level are. Furthermore, we will learn about analog to digital conversion and vice versa, sensors and actuators, Remote Terminal Units (RTUs), embedded controllers, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Distributed Control Systems (DCSs), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Historian, industrial protocols, and fieldbus. We would require a specific chapter for each system in order...