5G or not to 5G….that is the manufacturing question!

As if the wireless technologies for manufacturing couldn’t have more options….here is 5G!  Wireless is clearly the future technology for the manufacturing and specifically the OT side of manufacturing.  It is flexible, highly customizable, and extremely cost effective when compared to traditional network drops.  There are so many options today, and many of which manufacturers are already heavily invested in, with great results, so where does 5G fit into the picture?

It depends!

The manufacturing industry is experiencing seismic shifts, from the departure of skilled workers creating a talent gap to rising interest rates prompting constant budget re-evaluations. These factors, coupled with constant pressure to drive outcomes demands that we are business first, and technology second.

We all know where we need to go, but the road to get there can be a little challenging and bumpy.  It needs to start with a traditional “crawl-walk-run” strategy to drive a business payback on the investment, then leverage that technology across the enterprise.  What I mean is that if you find the right use case for a 5G implementation, then forge ahead and drive it forward.  Once that project is done, then start to leverage other use cases in your operations that can lean into this new network for even more business value.

Cisco’s Perspective

Azita Kia, our Technical Lead at the Cisco Mobility CTO Office to get some of her thoughts and perspectives:

Indeed, manufacturing has been going through a seismic shift, and in the heart of that shift is the “network” that connects everything to everything else. Consider a thing to be a person, a tool, an application, a data base, an assembly line, a whole factory, a yard, a port, you name it. Connectivity is the bloodline of automation which is a foundational driver for evolution of manufacturing.  We need a powerful network not only to automate but also to apply new world applications such as AI and AR/VR to factory operations. Everything runs over the network.

While better connectivity has been developed and is in use, say speed of light with fiber optics or hundreds of gigs with wireless ala 5G, application of these modalities for manufacturing remains nascent and slow to grow primarily due to complexity of manufacturing processes and contexts. It may be possible to deliver 100s of gig as mobile broadband or long-haul transport, but to bring this type of speed together with necessary reliability to ensure safety and process control are two separate topics.

In the case of 5G, 3GPP group started with a vision of defining a wireless methodology to replace industrial ethernet to untether manufacturing processes from wires and cables and enable a more flexible factory floor. This vision, which is one of the components of Industry 4.0, persists and if and when fully realized can truly shake up how factories are built and managed. There are innumerable benefits from untethering which many groups have described in “factories of future” designs.

To realize these visions, we need mature 5G equipment, UE/Radio/PacketCore, as well as factory level tools, applications, network, and security systems that can integrate these new modes of communication at a cost point that factory operators are willing to spend. We have made leaps of progress in the past few years towards availability of basic equipment for 5G and integration into factory network designs and work continues as new releases of 3GPP, particularly R16 which delivers Ultra Low Latency for industrial use cases, becomes available in UE and radio offers.

Use Cases

We have seen many cases, where deploying a mobility strategy on the plant floor has driven up productivity for the plant.  Bringing the data and solutions closer to the employee can help reduce unscheduled downtime and increase communications for the teams.  Instead of the traditional point to point radios on the plant floor, what if it looked different?

• If you had smartphones with a Webex client on them, then everything becomes more tightly connected.
• You may need to reach out to a remote expert outside of the plant.
• You could communicate with multiple people on multiple teams to address any problems or challenges.
• You could have analytics built into the system to better understand what is happening (or not happening!) in the operations.
• User manuals, troubleshooting guides, and experienced teams are at everyone’s fingertips to engage.

Technology: 5G to the rescue!

The inherent challenge with mobility is coverage.  We run into these problems even in our daily life using our phones, and you cannot let your plant have any network issues with any kind of mobility strategy.  The key is to make sure the site assessment is done extremely well, and you use partners like Cisco to develop and enable this critical technology with our world class wireless IoT team.  Security needs to be addressed up front and not as an afterthought in any type of network design, so that is top priority for you in these discussions.

We focus on network and security for a living…you need to make sure you are working with a trusted partner in this critical phase of your journey.

Resources

Cisco Portfolio Explorer for Manufacturing

See Cisco Private 5G in Action

Cisco Private 5G Solution Overview

5G: Enabling Change For Manufacturers

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