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Industrial edge computing moves processing capacity from the centralised cloud to the plant floor, the machine, or the robotic cell. Local latency (10-50 ms) is critical for process control, machine vision, and safety systems: it is a physical limit that bandwidth alone cannot solve. OPC UA, K3s, and private 5G now form a proven production-ready stack.
OPC UA is the standard protocol (IEC 62541) that connects industrial PLCs to IT systems, with built-in security and rich information models that Modbus or Profibus cannot match. Incremental adoption in phases, starting with an observer-mode gateway that leaves existing PLCs untouched, lets a plant running decades-old equipment modernise without stopping production.
A digital thread is the data architecture that connects PLM, MES, ERP, and IIoT under one common identifier, unlike a digital twin, which replicates a single asset. Here I explain what it is, how it differs from the twin, and how to start with one real use case instead of a project that never ends.
Without sensors generating reliable data, Industry 4.0 is just marketing. The foundation of any real project is instrumenting machines and production lines with temperature, vibration, pressure, and flow sensors, connecting them via Modbus, OPC-UA, or MQTT through a gateway, and starting with 5-10 sensors on a pilot line before buying at scale.
