A smart factory organizes itself without human intervention to produce the desired products. Data integration of IoT protocols, data correlation with other standard software like MES or ERP, and sharing data with independent business units for reporting or analytics is crucial for generating business value and improving the OEE. This blog post explores how data streaming powered by Apache Kafka helps connect and move data to the cloud at scale in real time, including a case study from BMW and a simple lightboard video about the related enterprise architecture.

The State of Data Streaming for Manufacturing in 2023

The evolution of industrial IoT, manufacturing 4.0, and digitalized B2B and customer relations require modern, open, and scalable information sharing. Data streaming allows integrating and correlating data in real time at any scale. Trends like software-defined manufacturing and data streaming help modernize and innovate the entire engineering and sales lifecycle.