IIC Track & Trace Testbed to Define IIoT Standard

In a recent release, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) announced that its Track & Trace Testbed has generated the requirements that helped define a new IIoT standard for Object Management Group (OMG)’s Simple Electronic Notation for Sensor Reporting (SENSR) specification, which is now available as a beta standard.

The IIC Track & Trace Testbed is designed to create visibility along the value chain by tracking geo-location, both indoor and outdoor, and usage of key assets.  From this, a need emerged for sensor manufacturers to publish the required interpretation of the data that they produce via an Electronic Data Sheet (EDS).

“For our customers, e.g. large retailers, we have to provide data from transport-related assets, like trailers and containers to ensure transport SLAs are met and logistics chains can be optimized,” said Kai Hackbarth, Business Owner Industrial, Bosch.IO and co-chair IIC Over-the-Air Special-Interest-Group. “We needed a standard method of retrieving data to help reduce the complexity.”

The OMG SENSR specification enables manufacturers to precisely describe the output of their hardware so devices consuming the data can properly interpret it. SENSR also enables manufacturers to specify an EDS that provides a precise model of the data their equipment produces.

“One of the primary drivers of our testbeds is to generate requirements for new standards and we’re delighted to see that OMG has used these requirments to create a new OMG IoT standard,” said Richard Soley, Executive Director, IIC, and chairman and CEO, OMG. “IIC testbeds use many industry standards and contribute to their improvements, but this is the first testbed to generate a set of requirements that have resulted in a new standard.”