One of the few benefits of having floated around for a long time is that my perspective on "new" "exciting" developments is the repetitive nature of them.
How may of you remember the hubbub about MAP back in the 80s? MAP (Manufacturing Automation Protocol) was the "IIoT" of its age, the grand unifying theory of all things industrial talking with all other things. It was developed by a consortium of GM, IBM and Boeing IIRC, and was WAY better than that new upstart, Ethernet. "Yessiree Bob, this is going to be the end-all / be-all to every industry..." Fzzzzttt.... gone by Y2K!
Then it was DeviceNet... "Yessiree Bob, I gotta tell you, THIS is going to be it..." Oh... never mind...
Then it was Profinet (if you were anywhere but the US). "Jahwolee Hans, zis is goink to solve ALL of zee problems mit DeviceNet..." Nien, it didn't...
Then Rockwell countered with ControlNet... "Yesiree Bob (again), he were are..." Oh wait, never mind again...
I will say though that Ethernet seems to have outlasted all of them and as it approaches the nirvana of true determinism, it's making things seem a lot more real this time. The ability of a network to manage firmware and programming changes in its connected devices starts to make the detractors of using complex devices become outweighed by the benefits. And lately I've been seeing predictive maintenance features being added to new designs that takes advantage of all this communications capability. I just looked at some features in some new VFDs that will PREDICT when a cooling fan is about to fail, warning the operator of it (via Ethernet) so that PREVENTATIVE action can be taken BEFORE an unscheduled shutdown takes place. THAT is where the rubber starts to hit the road in my experience. I also just implemented a system wherein a pump motor run by a "smart overload" is reporting shaft kW, then in the SCADA system we are comparing that to flow out of the pump and if flow/PU of shaft power starts to deviate, we can predict when the motor bearings are going to need to be replaced. Again, TANGIBLE benefits. It's getting there, it's just going to take some edumacation of the workforce.
And that's never a simple task...