What Is Industrial Connectivity?

What is industrial connectivity? Why is it important?

Industrial connectivity enables integrations and networking amongst various industrial devices, machines, and systems to enable communication, data exchange, control, and automation. This connectivity is the foundation for smart manufacturing, connected service, and digital thread initiatives to optimize efficiency, improve quality, reduce downtime, and enable predictive maintenance.

Evolution of industrial connectivity

Industrial connectivity originated back in the early days of automation and industrial controls. Initially developed to translate proprietary protocols for facilitating machine-to-machine communication, modern industrial connectivity encompasses integrations that enable data transmission to a wide array of OT and IT systems, including the cloud. Additionally, it incorporates software-as-a-service (SaaS) capabilities for remote configuration and management of connectivity at enterprise scale.

Benefits of industrial connectivity

Accelerate Digital Transformation

Industrial connectivity is pivotal in expediting digital transformation, ensuring that IT and OT applications enjoy seamless, secure access to essential operations data without needing to develop custom integrations or manually translate protocols.

Reduce Cybersecurity Risks

Industrial connectivity reduces cybersecurity risks by enabling robust security measures, such as encryption, authentication, and access controls, to safeguard against unauthorized access, data breaches, and cyber threats.

Improve Operations at Scale

Industrial connectivity makes OT data accessible for real-time monitoring, data analysis, and automation to enhance efficiency, productivity, and decision-making in industrial processes.

Industrial IoT (IIoT) use cases require an OT data strategy, especially when seeking IoT value at enterprise scale. Industrial connectivity provides data for IIoT by seamlessly and securely connecting to virtually any device in manufacturing operations. Read more about IoT and connectivity.

Condition-Based Monitoring

Condition-based monitoring checks the health of machinery and assets, ensuring they operate efficiently and with minimal downtime or defects.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance analyzes the condition of connected assets and equipment to reduce the likelihood of unplanned downtime or machine failure.

Digital Continuous Improvement

Digitizing continuous improvement processes identifies critical production bottlenecks, enables self-measuring results, and eliminates guesswork.

Industrial connectivity protocols and integrations

Collect data from virtually any OT asset and normalize it into a standard format, ready for use by OT and IT systems.

OPC UA

OPC Unified Architecture (UA) is a platform-independent, service-oriented protocol design that leverages one extensible specification framework to access data securely and reliably.

Explore OPC UA

OPC HDA

OPC Historical Data Access (OPC HDA) allows organizations to access their historical process data. Historical OPC data can be helpful for optimizing operations, analyzing performance, or conducting audits and regulatory checks.

Explore OPC HDA

MTConnect

MTConnect is a communications standard that can be implemented as a common language across equipment and software applications. The standard uses a well-defined data model that is presented in XML format over HTTP.

Explore MTConnect

Explore More

Explore the library of more than 300 OPC and IT protocols available from Kepware in the Kepware store. These protocols enable connectivity to virtually any device, asset, or sensor and the ability to seamlessly and securely move the data to other OT and IT systems.

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Leaders using industrial connectivity to power digital transformation

Discover how forward-thinking companies leverage industrial connectivity to unlock data access and accelerate digital transformations.

Electrolux

Learn how Electrolux leverages industrial connectivity to improve manufacturing operations, automate OEE, reduce scrap, and boost downtime response.

Read the Story

Howden

Learn how Howden uses industrial connectivity to remotely monitor the health and performance of their assets around the world.

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Brembo

Learn how Brembo is leveraging industrial connectivity and IoT to gain real-time visibility into manufacturing performance—saving $1.5 million.

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PTC’s industrial connectivity solutions

Kepware+: Industrial Connectivity for the Enterprise

Kepware+ is an enterprise industrial connectivity solution that standardizes the secure and seamless movement of data between industrial devices and OT and IT systems.

Explore Kepware+

KEPServerEX: Industrial Connectivity for Small Projects

KEPServerEX is an industrial connectivity platform to connect devices or machines and move data securely for small automation or insights projects.

Explore KEPServerEX

Enterprise Connectivity: What Is It and How Does It Work?

With an enterprise connectivity strategy, it’s possible to break down data silos and standardize data collection and security, increase implementation speed, and scale projects.

Blog

With an enterprise connectivity strategy, it’s possible to break down data silos and standardize data collection and security, increase implementation speed, and scale projects.

Enterprise Connectivity for Scalable Industrial Digital Transformation

Understand the top challenges and key steps leaders take to overcome them using industrial connectivity to scale across the enterprise.

Infographic

Understand the top challenges and key steps leaders take to overcome them using industrial connectivity to scale across the enterprise.

The Key to Manufacturing Digital Transformation

Discover how connectivity creates a foundation that sets digital transformation projects on the path to success.

Report

Discover how connectivity creates a foundation that sets digital transformation projects on the path to success.

Industrial connectivity FAQs

What makes standardized industrial connectivity unique?

Sophisticated OT systems like MES, SCADA, PLCs, and CNCs are rarely networked. Industrial connectivity drivers allow manufacturers to get valuable machine data into the network where predictive analytics can make it actionable. Standardizing industrial connectivity offers the following benefits:

Connect to virtually any device
Protocol translation enables connectivity to devices regardless of age or manufacturer—preventing the need to replace trusted equipment.

Access OT data at scale
Connectivity scales across multiple facilities—unlocking previously inaccessible data for valuable analysis and insights—while being flexible to individual plant needs.

Accelerate time to value
Replace time-consuming custom connections with a connectivity layer that implements quickly and is future-proof over time.

Security and reliability
Support new devices, future innovations, and rapidly evolving demands—while safeguarding against security threats and avoiding costly downtime.

How does industrial connectivity work?

Industrial connectivity works by creating a channel for communication and data across the machines in your production. Leveraging device drivers, industrial connectivity gives voice to machines by translating the proprietary protocols of each asset into normalized data that can then be accessed by a variety of IT and OT software systems that help monitor, control, and analyze your machines.

What’s the difference between industrial connectivity and industrial networking?

Industrial connectivity is a software solution for accessing OT data—created by devices, PLCs, machines, and more—and making it available amongst IT and OT systems. Industrial networking solutions are typically hardware-based and include routers, switches, cables, and devices.