1505-8568-000 The vision of the “industrial Internet” is certainly beautiful, but what is the reality? The following takes the petrochemical industry, which the author is familiar with, as an example to see whether the vision of “industrial Internet” has been realized in the petrochemical industry.

Start with smart devices. Petrochemical plant equipment mainly includes dynamic equipment, static equipment, electrical equipment and instrumentation equipment. Currently these devices do not have a large number of sensors installed and are uploaded over the network. Of course, I can’t say that nothing has changed. Some of the mobile devices have added wireless vibration temperature sensors. Data such as shaft vibration and shaft displacement of some large equipment are transmitted to the equipment manufacturer through the Internet. Part of the instrument data is uploaded wirelessly to the cloud server. But as a technology, the intelligence of equipment is not widely realized. Most of the so-called smart instruments are HART, fieldbus, RS-485 or wireless devices. The intelligent device management software of the control system collects instrument data. This technology was implemented before the concept of the “industrial 1505-8568-000 Internet” and does not support remote Internet access.

The reason why the intelligent equipment is not smooth is that the industrial data transmission technology does not support high-speed interconnection. At present, the data uploaded by the field equipment is mainly through HART, fieldbus, RS-485, Bluetooth, LORA, NB-IoT and other technologies. The transmission rate of these technologies is low, high closure, and incompatible, resulting in that even if the field equipment generates a large amount of equipment operation data, it can not be transmitted to the upper computer, not to mention the cloud server. A flowmeter manufacturer uses spectrum analysis software to diagnose the cause of flowmeter operation failure. However, due to data transmission reasons, they can only bring a spectrum analyzer to the site and collect instrument data through the probe.

1505-8568-000 The data acquisition of a single smart device is still so difficult, and the synergy of intelligent systems and intelligent decision-making are naturally difficult to achieve. The expected network optimization, maintenance optimization, system recovery and networked learning are almost impossible to find in reality. Being able to manage a single device and device is no longer simple. The equipment maintenance of many factories is still in the stage of manual entry of equipment accounts.

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In summary, in some petrochemical industries, the “industrial Internet” did not achieve the bright prospects originally described. The key to the problem is the first step – the intelligence of the device and its data upload. The current mainstream industrial data communication technology does not support high-speed, standardized, decoupling and extensive data transmission, the building of the “industrial Internet” has no solid data foundation, and the “industrial Internet” platform has become a castle in the air.

1505-8568-000 The definition of “industrial Internet” by the China Industrial Internet Research Institute is the product of the deep integration of a new generation of information technology and manufacturing industry, and an important infrastructure for the digital, networked and intelligent development of the industrial economy. Through the comprehensive interconnection of people, machines and things, a new industrial production and manufacturing service system with full connection of the whole factors, the whole industrial chain and the whole value chain is built.

Through this definition, it can be seen that the “industrial Internet” is characterized by “the comprehensive interconnection of people, machines and things.” The equipment of the process industry is not fully interconnected, called the Internet or the “industrial Internet”, which is not the name. In addition, the concept of the “industrial Internet” is also open to debate. Before the industrial Internet, computers, terminal equipment and other fully connected Internet already exists, the so-called “industrial Internet” is nothing more than the Internet plus networking industrial equipment and industrial data applications. Perhaps industrial data transmission will have some special requirements, such as deterministic 1505-8568-000 delay, security redundancy, etc., but the author really does not understand that industrial equipment connected to the Internet becomes the “industrial Internet”. The connection and data transmission of aircraft, ships and smart cars are all on the Internet, and there is no mention of “aviation Internet”, “shipping Internet” and “car Internet”. It is said that the “industrial Internet” has to set aside the Internet domain name /IP system to engage in another industrial equipment identification system, which is really confusing.

The direction of intelligent devices, intelligent systems and intelligent decision-making is undoubtedly correct, and the application of the Internet in industry is bound to be like the application of the Internet in other fields, which will greatly improve social productivity and create more value. However, the road to technological development is not smooth, do a good job of intelligent device technology and high-speed, standardized, decoupled and widely connected Internet data transmission technology is the first step in the success of the Internet in industrial applications.