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Time to Partner Up for Industry 4.0 Success

Time to Partner Up for Industry 4.0 Success Image Credit: Kanawat Vector/BigStockPhoto.com

The digitalization of manufacturing operations - often referred to as Industry 4.0 - represents a massive opportunity for partners such as systems integrators, value added resellers, telecommunications service providers, equipment manufacturers, and others.

Manufacturers of all sizes and types are understandably attracted by the benefits of this digital transformation, including; reduced material losses, improved customer service, better delivery lead times, faster speeds, lower latency, higher employee satisfaction, and lower environmental impact. Henrik von Scheel, the father of Industry 4.0, describes it as “the biggest structural change of the past 250 years - a transformation of scale, scope, and complexity unlike anything humankind has experienced before.

According to a recent report by independent research firm ABI Research, the total addressable market for 4G/5G private wireless networks will rise to more than US $109.3 billion in 2030.

And McKinsey Global Institute estimates 2025 Information and Communications Technology (ICT) value creation potential is greatest in industries such as manufacturing (factories and worksites), public sector (smart cities), logistics and transport. There are approximately 10.7m manufacturing plants around the world today, which could greatly benefit from 4.9G/LTE and 5G private wireless networks to enable new levels of automation, safety, efficiency, visibility, and productivity.

Manufacturers are already moving quickly. ABI Research conducted a survey of companies with 500+ employees considering the use of private wireless for manufacturing operations and 34% were either already using private wireless or running pilots or lab trials. And 66% of manufacturers expect a full ROI within 2 years.

4G/5G Adoption (Source: ABI Research)

With things ramping up that quickly, suppliers and partners across the telecommunications value chain want to know how they can pursue these manufacturing enterprise opportunities and what it will take to succeed. To them, we offer the following tips and suggestions:

Understand each manufacturer’s priorities

“Industry 4.0” has different meanings for different manufacturers. For some, the term describes advanced capabilities, such as:

  • Digital twins. A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world thing (e.g., an industrial machine), place (e.g., a manufacturing floor), a business process (e.g., a manufacturing process), and/or people. With a digital twin, a manufacturer can virtually experiment with ideas and gain insights into ways to improve products, optimize operations and costs, and create better customer experiences.
  • Automated mobile robots (AMRs). These are driverless vehicles which have been called AGVs, automated guided vehicles, but are now more intelligent, using sensors, cameras and factory maps that are used to move raw materials, work-in-progress, or finished goods around a manufacturing facility to support production. Valued for reducing manpower and increasing safety, they rely on IoT sensors to guide them from place to place.
  • Advanced robotics systems/collaborative robots (cobots). Unlike conventional manufacturing robots that worked alone, these new systems are multi-functional and can work together with humans.  These are transformative systems with superior sensory perception, integrability, adaptability, and mobility. These improvements permit faster setup, commissioning, and reconfiguration, as well as more efficient and safe operations. They are also more bandwidth intensive.

All of these innovations are becoming more accessible to more manufacturers - and private wireless networks are essential Industry 4.0 enablers that satisfy the need for bandwidth, performance, and security.

As the graph below from research conducted by Morning Consult, the top five priorities for manufacturers are: security/surveillance (50%), remote technical support (45%), digitalizing existing physical assets/machines (44%), quality assurance reporting (42%), and employee productivity (38%).

Source: Morning Consult

Partners seeking to support manufacturers in achieving their Industry 4.0 goals need to understand both their near-term and longer-term digitalization plans and how best to support them. Even manufacturers with more modest goals can be worth pursuing. By focusing on capturing the shorter-term “low-hanging fruit,” mobile operators, equipment providers and their partners can realize some early successes while building credibility and trust. This will position them well as reliable resources to deliver more advanced capabilities in the future.

Build now to accommodate tomorrow’s needs

Technology equipment providers and their partners need to look beyond manufacturers’ near-term priorities to recommend the appropriate technological components to each proposed solution. Industry 4.0 is a journey, not a destination, and it’s important not to short-change a manufacturing customer by limiting their future capabilities.

For example, you might install a Wi-Fi-based solution that could handle remote technical support today, but if your manufacturing operator should later want to deploy a more advanced, bandwidth-intensive Augmented Reality solution for tech support, that Wi-Fi network may not be able to support it with the level of performance needed.

Your customer’s Industry 4.0 program is only going to expand and become more sophisticated and technologically demanding over time. Therefore, build your recommended solution with an eye to the future. If you do, in most cases, you will want to build your solution on a dedicated state-of-the-art 4.9G/5G private wireless network.

Consider a private wireless network partner

As the stats cited above demonstrate, manufacturers are overwhelmingly choosing private wireless networks for their Industry 4.0 initiatives. There are many reasons for this:

  • Dedicated bandwidth. Unlike IP-based networks, a private wireless network does not share bandwidth with other public traffic. This helps ensure consistently high performance and availability.
  • Better security. Private wireless network traffic is encrypted and the network can be configured so that only secure, SIM-equipped components can authenticate and gain access.
  • Better uptime. A private wireless core network ensures that the system maintains quality-of-service parameters.
  • Greater range. 4G and 5G wireless technology can reach much farther than Wi-Fi with fewer access points required. It also does not require line-of-sight, so obstacles that would block Wi-Fi signals are not an issue.
  • Installation and deployment ease and flexibility. Radio access points can be installed almost anywhere – even in remote areas with poor Internet service. And because fewer access points are required, installation can be performed more quickly and affordably.
  • Easy scalability for future growth. Unlike Wi-Fi, latency doesn’t increase as users are added to a private wireless network. And companies can start with a 4G network and easily upgrade to the superior performance of 5G as it becomes available.
  • A tailored solution. Each private wireless network is custom designed for the specific needs of each customer, without the constraints of public Wi-Fi.

In addition, private wireless networks are now affordable and manageable – even for manufacturers who aren’t industry giants.

Build partnerships to deliver maximum value

Any successful Industry 4.0 initiative requires a broad range of competencies. That means a team of professionals from multiple disciplines working together. A typical project could require a partnership composed of an industrial automation company, a robotics firm, a systems integrator, software vendors, network equipment providers, and a telecom service provider.

Industry 4.0 partnerships have been proven to be extremely effective. For example:

  • At a large oil and gas manufacturer an innovative private wireless solution was deployed working with a Global Systems Integrator to support Industry 4.0-enabled worker safety and collaboration, asset tracking, and other capabilities using a blueprint that it plans to expand and deploy across its sites worldwide.
  • A global leader in the production of intermediates of polymers for nylon, embarked on a digital transformation project at its facility in France. Working with a major Service Provider as a Partner the backbone for a redundant, secure, and dedicated 4G private wireless network upgradeable to 5G was designed and deployed. The equipment and the data collected will have 99.99% network availability, enabling the plant to anticipate failures and ensure continuous production.

Industry 4.0 partnerships require not only technical competency, but the willingness to share risk and collaborate closely. How do you identify a good partner? Manufacturing operators should consider the following criteria:

  • Trustworthiness. Partners needs to consistently deliver on their promises.
  • Proven track record in the enterprise. Nothing beats experience, especially in a competitive environment.
  • Solutions adapted to enterprise needs. Components tailored to the requirements and preferences of business customers will deliver more value.
  • Solution mindset. Thinking in terms of an end-to-end solution ensures that everyone on the project is focused on the end goal.
  • Flexibility, innovation, and futureproofing. Industry 4.0 is a learning experience, and everyone needs to be open to change.
  • Long-term viability and stability. Established partners will be there for the long haul.
  • “Trusted advisor” role. Partners need to offer recommendations and ideas, not just products and services.

A broad ecosystem of partners that check all of these boxes will ensure effective collaboration with manufacturing operators as they identify opportunities, solve problems, meet project timetables, share knowledge, and digitally transform operations. Time to partner up!

Author

Nathan Stenson is the Global Head of Enterprise Partners, Nokia Customer Experience.

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