Abstract: Industrial Internet, motivated by the deep integration of new-generation information and communication technology (ICT) and advanced manufacturing technology, will open up the production chain, value chain, and industry chain by establishing complete interconnections between humans, machines, and things. This will also help establish novel manufacturing and service modes, where personalized and customized production for differentiated services is a typical paradigm of future intelligent manufacturing. Thus, there is an urgent requirement to break through the existing chimney-like service mode provided by the hierarchical heterogeneous network architecture and establish a transparent channel for manufacturing and services using a flat network architecture. Starting from the basic concepts of process manufacturing and discrete manufacturing, we first analyze the basic requirements of typical manufacturing tasks. Then, with an overview on the developing process of industrial Internet, we systematically compare the current networking technologies and further analyze the problems of the present industrial Internet. On this basis, we propose to establish a novel "thin waist" that integrates sensing, communication, computing, and control for the future industrial Internet. Furthermore, we perform a deep analysis and engage in a discussion on the key challenges and future research issues regarding the multi-dimensional collaborative sensing of task–resource, the end-to-end deterministic communication of heterogeneous networks, and virtual computing and operation control of industrial Internet.

Key words: Intelligent manufacturing; Industrial Internet; Thin waist; Transparent service; Manufacturing as a service

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