IO-Link grows and grows and grows - both the number of members and the number of installed nodes. Thus, Reinhard Schlagenhaufer, Speaker of the Steering Committee of IO-Link, was delighted to be able to present the latest positive growth figures at the IO-Link Members Assembly on June 22, 2017 in Frankfurt, Germany to nearly 50 participants.

As the data from factories scales exponentially, the ability to access that data transparently becomes critical. If we want the Industrial Internet of Things to truly be a game changer for the manufacturing industry, open standards will be a major enabler of that transformation.

A recent magazine article outlined six steps to take to implement the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It was mostly political – form a team, get buy-in from a C-level executive, etc. The political approach may be valuable, but for engineers the steps are different. So here are the six technical steps to the IIoT.