Summary

In this chapter, we have looked at what an industrial process and an automated system are. We have identified the physical process, the control systems, and their interactions. The physical process is a combination of operations that act on entities that belong to the physical world and change some of their characteristics. The control system receives the information on the status of the process, elaborates it, and performs the required actions on the physical process. A more rigorous definition of process control and data acquisition systems has been also provided. We have identified and defined the different entities involved, which included devices, resources, data, events, and the interface.

Following this, we learned about the different kinds of industrial processes there are, distinguishing between continuous, semi-continuous, discrete, and batch processes. We also looked at which activities support the production cycle, including business, design, planning, and control. After that, we introduced the CIM model, which is a hierarchical structure that integrates the production processes, the automation systems, and the information technology systems at a company or enterprise level. We analyzed in detail the hierarchical structures of the CIM pyramid, acknowledging its levels and their aggregation from different perspectives. We then learned what the main industrial devices and networks are in each level of the CIM pyramid. From this, we gained an understanding of which devices act as data sources in the I-IoT data flow.

Following on from this, we analyzed the data flow of industrial signals, from their generation by the sensors, to when they are processed in the cloud. Data acquisition, data sources, the related protocols, and the edge device for pushing the data into the cloud will be analyzed and discussed in Chapter 3, Industrial Data Flow and Devices and Chapter 4, Implementing the Industrial IoT Data Flow. In Chapter 5, Applying Cybersecurity, in ICS and IP in the Industrial I-IoT will both be discussed in full.