The development lifecycle of an AIoT-enabled product or solution usually includes a number of different sub-elements, which need to be brought together in a meaningful way. This chapter discusses this for both products and solutions.

1 Smart, Connected Products

Smart, connected products usually combine two types of features: physical and digital. The physical features are enabled by physical elements and mechanical mechanisms. The digital features are supported by sensors and actuators as the interface to the physical product, as well as edge and cloud-based components. Digital features can be realized as hardware, software or AI.

This means that the development life-cycle of a smart, connected product must include physical product development as well as manufacturing engineering. The development lifecycle of digital features focuses on DevOps for the edge components (including MLops for the AI deployed to the edge, DevOps for embedded and edge software, and embedded/edge hardware), as well as the cloud (including MLops for cloud-based AI and standard DevOps for cloud-based software).

All of this must be managed with a holistic Product Lifecycle Management approach. In most cases, this will require the integration of a number of different processes and platforms. For example, the development life cycle of the physical features is traditionally supported by an engineering PLM platform, while software development is supported through a CI/CT/CD pipeline (Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, and Continuous Deployment). For AI, these kinds of pipelines are different and not yet as sophisticated and mature as in the software world. The following will describe how such a holistic lifecycle can be supported (Fig. 18.1).

Fig. 18.1
A schematic of physical features relates to digital features. Physical features are product design and manufacturing engineering. Digital features are sensors, actuators, cloud A I for the holistic P L M including A I o T product life cycle.

Lifecycle – product perspective

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Topics closely related to this include Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), as well as mechatronics. Mechatronics is an interdisciplinary engineering approach that focuses on the integration of mechanical, electronic and electrical engineering systems. The term CPS is sometimes used in the embedded world, sometimes with a similar meaning as IoT: integrate sensing and control as well as computation and networking into physical assets and infrastructure. Both concepts and the related development life-cycles can support smart, connected products.

2 Smart, Connected Solutions

For smart, connected solutions supporting the Digital Equipment Operator, the picture looks slightly different since physical product development is usually not within our scope. Sensors, actuators and edge nodes are usually deployed to existing assets in the field by using a retrofit approach. This means that the holistic lifecycle in this case does not include physical product design and manufacturing engineering. Other than this, it looks similar to the product perspective, expect that usually the required development pipelines will not be as sophisticated and highly automated as in the case of standardized product development (which typically invests more in these areas) (Fig. 18.2).

Fig. 18.2
A schematic illustrates digital features of the A I o T solution life cycle management such as sensors, actuators, edge A I, M loops, edge S W, edge H W for the retro fit of the physical assets.

Lifecycle – solution perspective

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