“COVID-19 increased the rate of digital communications by six years”

By Sandeep Sehgal

The Industry 4.0 digital transformation in manufacturing is being driven by the need to collect more data and to collaborate in real-time to quickly access, analyze to gain insight, and take action in order to adapt and adjust to changing market forces in order to remain competitive. Manufacturing OT organizations are looking to replace legacy TETRA land mobile radio and SCADA systems with more advanced, next-generation wireless technology that is more reliable, provides increase scalability and bandwidth to support their operations.

Manufacturing operations are also looking to make their production lines and processes more agile and flexible through the addition of mobile robots and the industrial internet of things (IIoT) to wirelessly connect devices. This gives them the ability to quickly reconfigure their lines to meet new requirements. Manufacturing IT organizations want next-generation wireless technology that is standards-based, secure, and is future-proof. This has led manufacturers to investigate and initiate the deployment of 4G/5G cellular technology within their facilities operations.

The challenges

For manufacturers, the top challenges across their IT and OT organizations according to a survey done of 600+ manufacturers by Nokia and ABI Research in early 2020 (pre-COVID) are: reducing unplanned downtime; improving operational efficiency; replacing aging infrastructure; increasing capacity; and improving security and workplace safety.

While some manufacturing sectors saw a drop in demand during the pandemic, others saw a significant increase in demand driven by the explosion of e-commerce for their products. But nearly all felt the impact of a supply chain that couldn’t meet demands for materials or parts that were often sourced from far-off geographies due to the lean supply chains strategies adopted to drive lower costs and increase efficiencies. This has led manufacturers to rethink their supply chains and make them more robust by increasing the number of suppliers with local or nearshoring to shorten the distances between them.

It has also affected the pace of digital transformation. A survey done by Bell Labs Consulting of 2,500 companies across industries worldwide found that COVID-19 increased the rate of digital communications by six years. The research also indicated that industries that have invested in digital infrastructure came out of the pandemic in far better shape than those that did not make this investment. Going ahead, to become better prepared for future pandemics and major disruptions physical industries such as manufacturing will need to digitalize their infrastructure through the adoption of technologies closely tied to 5G.

Solutions and opportunities

For manufacturers that are starting on their digital transformation journey, a fundamental component is to provide reliable, scalable, high-performance network connectivity for their wireless equipment, IIoT sensors, and devices. With an industrial-grade private wireless solution, manufacturers can deploy their own bespoke, dedicated network that is specifically designed to meet their requirements. It can operate in unlicensed, shared, licensed 4G or 5G spectrum and can be wholly managed by its own IT organization, through a third party as a managed network service.

Manufacturing OT organizations are looking to replace legacy TETRA land mobile radio and SCADA systems with more advanced wireless technologies.

The deployment of 4G/5G private wireless as the networking infrastructure for digitalization and automation plans will also help identify new use cases and applications that were not possible with existing networks. The use of high-definition AR/VR with wireless headsets will improve factory worker training enabling them to learn more quickly and reduce the ramp-up time to greater throughput and efficiency.

Real-time processing of critical operational data provides greater insights and helps in monitoring the performance of assets. This enables predictive maintenance and digital twins to create digital representations of machines and factory layouts to identify issues before they occur. It also helps model new lines and simulates their performance before they are implemented. Intra-logistics can be greatly improved with the addition of autonomous mobile robots to efficiently move parts and materials from the warehouse to the factory floor and between assembly operations. These use cases can be implemented today using existing 4G/LTE technology that supports a broad ecosystem of devices and industrial automation system providers.

To become better prepared for future pandemics, manufacturing will need to digitalize their infrastructure through the adoption of technologies closely tied to 5G.

Future outlook

As the standards for industrial 5G are defined in releases 16, 17, and 18, there will be new applications for manufacturing that can take advantage of the new features and capabilities that are not possible with 4G. An increase in uplink and downlink speeds (10 Gbps), increase in scalability and connectivity (1m IoT devices/sq km), ultra-low network latency (1 ms), and high-reliability (6 9s) will give manufacturers the performance, security, and reliability of today’s wired industrial Ethernet network along with untethered freedom, mobility, and coverage. This will help support precision assembly and control of cobots with time-sensitive networking (TSN) and precise location of assets (down to centimeters), which will further automate operations. Besides, it will improve productivity and efficiency while making them safer and more secure.

Sehgal is Head at Enterprise Business, Nokia India