Test of industrial Internet of Things. Opening the black box

The smart factory paradigm follows a self-control philosophy and carries an ecosystem of cyber physical systems and internet of things services. They are interacting dynamically. CPSs can enter the ecosystem and leave it after they are no more required or obsolete. In fact, the behaviour and potential risk related to one IoT component can be a blackbox for the user but it has direct influence in the stability of the manufacturing. Interoperability issues can just stop the production process and creates high economic losses. It becomes much more critical if the CPSs are part of a wider network. From industrial experiences, such risks are underestimated. It is necessary to provide technologies on top of the existing protocol compliance tests to provide a transparent view to decision makers. The paper provides an initial concept on potential approaches derived from a German national project for IoT test solutions and labs (IoT-T).