21  Debate: Edge vs. Cloud Processing Placement

A Technical Trade-off Scenario

This scenario is drawn from a manufacturing predictive-maintenance deployment and is meant to be worked through as a design-decision exercise.

21.1 Edge vs Cloud Processing

Discussion Prompt

Scenario: A manufacturing plant monitors 1,000 machines with vibration sensors (1kHz sampling). Goal: Predict failures before they happen.

Question: Where should the ML inference run?

Position A: Edge processing - Lower latency for real-time alerts - Bandwidth savings - Works during network outages

Position B: Cloud processing - More powerful models - Centralized model updates - Cross-plant pattern detection

Your Task: Each person picks a position and must defend it for 3 minutes. Then switch sides.