Developing Track & Trace with the Ignite | IoT Methodology

The following sections document how we developed the first milestone of the Track & Trace testbed – the keynote demo for Bosch ConnectedWorld – with the help of the Ignite | IoT Methodology. We chose this scenario for Part III for the following reasons:

  • Firstly, the scenario should represent the complexity of a typical IoT project as described by the Ignite | IoT Solution Delivery methodology. Hence, we decided to select a case study that involves multiple stakeholders from different application domains. In our case study we included Bosch Rexroth as a connected tool manufacturer, Cisco as a wireless/localization expert, Bosch Software Innovations as a provider of IoT middleware and industrial solution design, Dassault/Haption/XSENS as 3D visualization and interaction experts, and Tech Mahindra as the system integrator to build the complete solution.
  • Secondly, the scenario should be simple enough to be described in a couple of pages (we hope that we managed to do this!). Those without much knowledge of the domain should be easily able to follow its core idea. So we used a well-known thing – nutrunners – and investigated their professional usage in industry.
  • Finally, the case study should not be a one-off demo, but should have the potential to be developed into a professional solution over multiple steps – as outlined by the phased approach above. The collaborative approach taken with the IIC to build the partner ecosystem for Track & Trace has been working very well so far.

Alignment of the Ignite | IoT Methodology with the IIC Reference Architecture: The main goal of Part III is to provide a concrete example for the use of the Ignite | IoT Methodology, as described in Part II. Because Part III is also a description of an IIC testbed, another key requirement involved compliance with the IIC Reference Architecture (RA). The IIC RA is based on a four-layer structure, as opposed to the three-layer structure proposed by Ignite in Part II. So what we did was to re-arrange the Ignite artifacts to match the IIC RA Viewpoints. The figure below describes this mapping. This example also highlights the flexibility of the Ignite | IoT Methodology in matching different architectures.

Alignment of Ignite | IoT Methodology with IIC Reference Architecture

Please note that projects don’t always have to use all of the Ignite artifacts. In this example, neither the quantity structure (projections) nor the HW design from Ignite is used. The former is due to the fact that Track & Trace is currently a testbed without a commercial rollout (as of yet), while the latter is due to the fact that the applied hardware from Rexroth is already fully functional and doesn’t need any enhancements to be integrated in the solution.