Today's global trends for higher levels of automation and increased connectedness of humans and processes are tightly connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).  Many domains like industrial automation, health-care, smart cities, or agriculture increasingly rely on a tight interconnected network of sensors and machines, to monitor and control processes on an increasingly fine-granular level. The tighter and more fine-granular monitoring and control can be exerted, the higher are the potential gains derived from process optimizations, enhancements or predictive error handling. The IoT field of research typically covers interdisciplinary work between computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineer and sociology to both realize IoT networks, and understand their impact on work and people.

In order to realize the full potential of IoT networks for data-analysis, the connected processes, with their context information about customers, order, schedules, strategies, and quality have to be perceived as integral part of IoT networks, leading to the concept of the Internet of Processes and Things (IoPT).

Informal Working Group Members

• Technical University of Munich (Stefanie Rinderle-Ma)
• University of St. Gallen (Barbara Weber)
• University of Trier (Ralph Bergmann)
• German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) (Ralph Bergmann)
• Ulm University (Manfred Reichert)