Technology
From machine data to intelligence
Six layers between a signal on a machine and a decision somebody acts on. Every one of them is a place a project quietly fails, which is why they are named separately.
Layer 01
Sense
What the machine already emits — a signal, a tag, a counter, a reading.
- Sensors
- PLCs
- SCADA
- Machine signals
Layer 02
Connect
Getting those signals off the machine, in whatever protocol it speaks.
- Industrial protocols
- Gateways
- APIs
- Data integration
Layer 03
Process
Filtering, aggregating and timestamping close to the source, before anything travels.
- Edge computing
- Data filtering
- Data aggregation
- Real-time processing
Layer 04
Analyze
Finding what is abnormal, what it means, and what usually follows it.
- AI / ML
- Anomaly detection
- Predictive analytics
- Computer vision
Layer 05
Visualize
Putting the result in front of the person who can act on it, and alerting when they should.
- Dashboards
- KPIs
- Alerts
- Reports
Layer 06
Act
The point of the whole chain — a work order raised, a setting changed, a stop avoided.
- Recommendations
- Maintenance actions
- Operational decisions
- Automation
Deployment
Edge, cloud, on-premise or hybrid
Where the intelligence runs is your decision, and it is not one you make once and cannot revisit.
Edge
Next to the machine, where latency is measured in milliseconds and the network is optional.
- Real-time processing
- Low latency
- Local intelligence
- Offline capability
Cloud
One view across sites, and the room to analyse more history than an edge box can hold.
- Centralized data
- Multi-site visibility
- Scalable analytics
- Enterprise integration
On-Premise
Inside your own perimeter, for the plants where operational data does not leave the site.
- Data sovereignty
- Existing IT infrastructure
- Local deployment
- Enterprise control
Hybrid
The usual answer in practice — decisions at the edge, history and comparison above it.
- Edge intelligence
- On-premise systems
- Cloud analytics
- Flexible architecture
Which layer are you stuck at?
Most plants are further along than they think at Sense and Connect, and stop at Analyze because nobody owns the question the data was supposed to answer.