German industry colossus Bosch is proposing a new data exchange standard, Production Performance Management Protocol (PPMP), for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a.k.a. Industry 4.0 in Germany. PPMP is designed to facilitate the interplay of partners in different technology segments and vertical markets. Remarkably, Bosch characterizes the protocol as an open, common language for machines.

Industry 4.0 is an enormous market and well worth scoping by start-up companies. Take, for instance, sensors and machines in a production system: they provide their real-time data to a central clunk of PPM software – which is rather complex because many machines and sensors involved are using different data formats and communications protocols. In this context PPMP is a tool to enable better understanding between these sensors, machines and data sources.

PPMP can be used free of license fees. Curious who’s behind all this and shining a Bosch headlight we discovered The Eclipse IoT Working Group, a collaboration of industry and academic partners who are building a set of open source technology that (they hope) will be the foundation for the Internet of Things (IoT). The focus of the collaboration is on building 1) open source implementations of IoT standards and protocols, 2) open source frameworks and services that will be used by IoT solutions, and 3) tools for IoT developers.

Elektor too has free information on Industry 4.0: download this edition of Elektor Business Magazine.