The original vision of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) was of intelligent assets communicating their state and conditions to centralized software applications that would aggregate, perform analytics, identify risks, and intelligently direct human action. One major issue with this vision is that existing capital assets were not “smart.” To obtain equipment condition data one either had to add new sensing to the asset or draw sensor data (if it existed) from the installed automation systems. 

Thus, much of the early work in the IIoT area focused on “large machines that spin”; capitalintensive rotating equipment, such as large motors, engines, generators, turbines, compressors, etc. This equipment was usually already equipped with some condition monitoring instrumentation or could be retrofitted relatively easily, making this critical data available. But when it came to passive or non-rotating assets (such as electrical switchgear) the IIoT model did fit as well. Even though such equipment might be absolutely mission-critical to a factory, plant, airport, or data center, it remained largely unmonitored and invisible. 

Today, a new generation of switchgear embeds far more sensing capability and includes built-in connectivity that facilitates higher level applications for advanced control, data aggregation, and analytics.