Scope of System of Systems (SoS) in Industrial Technology and Examples

Sustainability plays an important role in technology systems in industry. Sustainability means optimal design, cost-performance trade-off, energy, space and time savings, scalability, and interoperability (open systems). One of the designs that focuses on advanced industrial systems is system-of-systems design phenomenon. Immediate examples where the SoS can be applied are business, education, government, healthcare, media, engineering, transportation, agriculture, safety, and so on. The SoS paradigm is configurable, and it requires knowledge base from several disciplines including sociology; physics; chemistry; biology; biochemistry; instrumentation engineering; mechanical engineering; manufacturing engineering; mechatronics engineering; electrical, electronics, and communication engineering; production engineering; and all under the banner of engineering technology. Keeping in view sustainability, this chapter presents topics on industrial technology (IT) and systems of systems (SoS). First it presents an introduction to Industry 4.0 standards and systems, an important aspect of SoS, and then some application areas of IT as far as developments are concerned. The chapter includes (i) introduction to Industry 4.0, (ii) safety and privacy standards in industrial technology systems, (iii) agricultural safety and standards, (iv) advanced food processing and packaging, (v) space and ocean technology systems, (vi) smart home with energy implications, (vii) hypertube technology in transportation, (viii) MEMS and NEMS technology, (ix) entertainment technology, (x) business opportunity on social media and networking, and (xi) SoS concluding remarks.