Manufacturing Hub Ep. 251 - Ignition 8.3 ProveIt How Inductive Automation Scales Multi Site Factories w/ MQTT and UNS
In this episode of Manufacturing Hub, Vlad and Dave sit down with Travis Cox and Kevin McCluskey from Inductive Automation to unpack what was actually proven at ProveIt and why it matters for teams trying to modernize plants without building a fragile mess of point to point integrations. If you have ever looked at a shiny demo and wondered what the real architecture looks like, how it scales beyond a single line, and what it takes to roll out across multiple sites without turning every change into a high risk event, this conversation is for you.
Travis and Kevin walk through their ProveIt Enterprise B build and the thinking behind it. The core idea is simple but powerful: treat the factory like a system that needs a shared digital infrastructure, built on open standards, where data is contextualized and reusable. They break down how they used Ignition Edge close to PLCs for resiliency, local HMIs, and disciplined data modeling, then moved data through MQTT into a Unified Namespace so multiple applications can consume the same trusted signals and context. This is the difference between “we can connect to anything” and “we can scale without rewriting everything every time the business changes.” Open standards show up repeatedly in the conversation because ProveIt is specifically designed to force interoperability and practical implementation tradeoffs. Inductive Automation has also written about ProveIt as a place where MQTT, OPC UA, and SQL show up as real foundations rather than slogans.
From there, the episode gets into the part that should make both OT and IT teams pay attention: modern deployment practices applied to industrial applications. Kevin outlines a clear maturity path from a single designer workflow to version control, then to containerized deployments, and finally to full GitOps style promotion across dev, staging, and production using tools like Argo CD, Helm, Kubernetes, and release promotion concepts that look like what the software world has used for years. Argo CD is explicitly built around Git repositories as the source of truth for desired state, which is exactly why it fits this style of deployment. The live portion of the conversation demonstrates how fast this can get when the infrastructure is treated as code: they spin up a brand new “site four” by submitting a form, generating a pull request, merging it, and letting the pipeline do the rest.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome back and why this ProveIt recap matters
01:35 Meet Travis Cox and Kevin McCluskey from Inductive Automation
03:10 What ProveIt is and the key vendor questions it forces
05:20 Enterprise B architecture overview from PLC to Edge to site to enterprise
07:30 HMI walkthrough across liquid processing, filling, packaging, palletizing
09:05 Why deploy Ignition Edge instead of only a centralized site gateway
12:05 Design once, reuse everywhere and what that means for scaling quickly
14:35 On prem realities versus cloud infrastructure in the ProveIt environment
17:10 MCP, n8n workflows, and bringing live operational context into AI
20:40 i3X style API access to models, history, and alarms for interoperability
23:15 GitHub, Docker Compose, Helm, Kubernetes, Argo CD, Cargo and GitOps promotion
36:55 Spinning up a new site live and what it changes for multi site rollouts
About the hosts
Vlad Romanov is an electrical engineer and MBA who has spent over a decade building and modernizing manufacturing systems across industrial automation, controls, and plant operations. Through Joltek, Vlad works with manufacturers to assess current state OT foundations, reduce modernization risk, improve reliability, and build internal capability through practical training and standards that stick.
Dave Griffith co hosts Manufacturing Hub and brings a practitioner lens focused on what works on the plant floor, how architectures survive real constraints, and how industrial teams can modernize without breaking production.
About the guests
Travis Cox is Chief Technology Evangelist at Inductive Automation and has spent over two decades helping customers and partners design scalable architectures, apply best practices, and deliver real solutions with Ignition.
Kevin McCluskey is Chief Technology Architect at Inductive Automation and works with organizations on architecture decisions, platform direction, and enabling the next generation of industrial applications.
Learn more about Joltek