AWS IoT SiteWise
An industrial IoT service that collects, structures, and visualizes sensor data from industrial equipment, enabling real-time monitoring of equipment status and anomaly detection
Overview
AWS IoT SiteWise is an industrial IoT service that collects sensor data at scale from industrial facilities such as factories and power plants, structures it as asset models, and stores and visualizes it. The SiteWise Edge gateway supports OPC-UA protocol, enabling direct data ingestion from existing industrial control systems (SCADA/PLC). Asset models define equipment hierarchy (factory → line → machine → sensor) and configure formulas and alarms, enabling automatic calculation of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and immediate notifications when thresholds are exceeded.
Asset Modeling and Data Structuring
SiteWise asset models represent the physical hierarchical structure of industrial equipment as a digital twin. Asset models consist of three property types: Measurements (raw data ingested directly from sensors - temperature, pressure, RPM, etc.), Transforms (immediate calculations on measurements - Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion, unit conversion, etc.), and Metrics (time-window aggregations - hourly averages, daily maximums, etc.). Defining asset models as templates enables efficient management of thousands of identical machines by reusing models when instantiating multiple units of the same equipment type. Asset relationships (parent-child) enable declarative cascade calculations, such as automatically aggregating factory-wide OEE from individual line OEE values.
SiteWise Edge and On-Premises Data Collection
The SiteWise Edge gateway is a software component running on AWS IoT Greengrass, installed within factory networks to collect data from OPC-UA servers. OPC-UA is the standard protocol for industrial automation, supported by major PLC manufacturers including Siemens, Rockwell, and Mitsubishi Electric. The gateway performs data buffering and filtering at the edge, transferring data to the cloud while minimizing network bandwidth consumption. In environments with intermittent internet connectivity, data accumulates in local storage and automatically syncs to the cloud when connectivity is restored. Edge-side alarm evaluation is also possible, enabling immediate on-site response without cloud round-trip latency. Modbus TCP/IP protocol support has also been added, enabling data collection from legacy industrial equipment.
Visualization with SiteWise Monitor and Anomaly Detection
SiteWise Monitor is a web application that builds sensor data dashboards without coding. On-site operators and facility managers can check real-time equipment status from a browser and drill down into alarming equipment to identify root causes. Integration with IAM Identity Center enables access control to specific assets per factory or line manager. For anomaly detection, SiteWise's alarm feature supports both static thresholds (warn when temperature exceeds 80°C) and compound conditions (temperature rising AND vibration increasing). Furthermore, integration with IoT Events enables complex state-machine-based alarm logic with automated staged escalation (warning → critical → emergency shutdown) - an effective pattern in production operations. Accumulated data can be analyzed with SageMaker to build predictive maintenance models that detect failure precursors.