This Glossary is a structured compendium of the most used terms, protocols, and technologies in Industry 4.0, production monitoring, and advanced industrial maintenance.
The set of work orders still pending execution in a plant. A backlog that grows steadily signals that the maintenance team is overwhelmed or that data to prioritize correctly is missing.
Software that centralizes work orders, failure history, spare-part inventory and preventive maintenance plans for a plant's assets.
The probability that an asset performs its function under normal operating conditions for a given period without failing. It is the central indicator of any predictive maintenance strategy.
A dynamic virtual representation of a physical system. iGromi builds an Operational Digital Twin of your plant, showing the real-time state of every motor, conveyor and sensor in a web interface.
A distributed computing architecture where data is processed close to its source (the machine) instead of being shipped to the cloud. This guarantees near-zero latency, data security and continuous operation even without internet.
Software that manages finance, purchasing, sales and human resources at corporate level. It operates at a different abstraction level than an MES: it plans the business, it does not execute production in real time.
The discipline that coordinates an organization's activities to extract maximum value from its physical assets across their life cycle, balancing cost, risk and performance.
The network of instruments, sensors and devices connected to industrial computers. Unlike consumer IoT, it focuses on mission-critical operation, low latency and high reliability for process control.
A family of international standards defining the requirements for a physical asset management system. It establishes how to align maintenance and equipment life cycle with the organization's strategic objectives.
A maintenance metric measuring the average time elapsed between one mechanical failure and the next. A high MTBF indicates high equipment reliability.
The average time it takes the maintenance team to diagnose and fix a failure and return the asset to production. Reducing MTTR is the primary goal of early-warning systems.
The grandfather of industrial protocols. Created in 1979, it remains the de facto standard for connecting PLCs and sensors. iGromi supports both Modbus RTU (serial) and Modbus TCP (Ethernet).
Software sitting between the ERP and the shop floor (PLCs, SCADA): it executes production orders, tracks work-in-progress inventory and captures each machine's performance in real time.
A maintenance strategy based on calendar or usage (operating hours, cycles): the asset is serviced at fixed intervals whether or not there are signs of wear. It reduces unplanned failures but can trigger unnecessary part replacement.
Intervention performed after the equipment has already failed. It has the lowest planning cost but the highest impact on unplanned downtime — the goal of any reliability programme is to shrink its share versus preventive and predictive work.
A strategy that uses sensors (vibration, temperature, current) and data analysis to anticipate a failure before it happens, servicing the asset only when the data shows real wear. It is the core approach of iGromi OS.
The global standard for measuring manufacturing productivity. It calculates the percentage of production time that is genuinely productive, combining three factors: Availability (is the machine running?), Performance (is it running at full speed?) and Quality (is it producing good parts?).
A cross-platform machine-to-machine communication protocol. It is the modern Industry 4.0 standard thanks to its built-in security and its ability to handle complex data structures, not just bits and bytes.
A rugged industrial computer designed to control manufacturing processes. It is the machine's local brain. Common brands include Siemens, Allen-Bradley, Omron and Schneider Electric.
The practice of modernizing legacy machinery by adding sensors and IoT connectivity without altering its mechanics or original PLC. It digitizes 1980s/90s plants for a fraction of the cost of buying new equipment.
A methodology that analyses how each asset can fail and prioritizes maintenance strategies (preventive, predictive or corrective) according to the real operational impact of each failure mode.
A supervision and control system that remotely monitors and operates industrial processes, collecting data from PLCs and sensors in real time. Unlike an MES, a SCADA does not manage production orders or connect to the business layer.
A management philosophy where maintenance stops being the exclusive responsibility of a technical team and involves the entire plant staff, machine operators included, to maximize availability and eliminate losses.