Practical Guide to Smart Factory Transition Using IoT, Big Data and Edge Analytics

In this age of digital disruption, every industry is undergoing digital transformation and manufacturing is no exception. Since Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Big Data have immense transformational potential, manufacturing companies are in a race to implement IoT-based solutions to innovate, improve productivity, reduce costs, and improve their market share. As companies try to embrace IoT, one of the key challenges that they face is to come up with an "Integrated Approach." "Integrated Approach" includes fitting IoT in the overall system landscape, selecting the right use case, and evaluating and deciding on implementation approach. This paper provides guidance to transform legacy manufacturing unit to a smart factory conforming to Industry 4.0 principles. It presents a reference architecture and offers various practical approaches for consideration to embark on digital journey. It details each approach along with its own benefits and challenges and helps organizations to realistically determine faster time-to-market versus its long-term goals. This paper attempts to perform a deep dive on various aspects of integrated approach which will be immensely helpful for organizations and researchers alike.