Private 5G – Enabling Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is upon us, promising greater operational efficiencies and flexibility at lower costs. It will transform the manufacturing domain by driving advances in everything from remote monitoring to advanced analytics, asset tracking, and preventive maintenance. However, all these advances rely on connectivity. Today, industrial connectivity is largely dependent on either Wi-Fi or fixed cables that are expensive, limited to stationery assets, and highly challenging to scale to the large number of devices that Industry 4.0 manufacturing facilities will connect. Furthermore, automation is the key to enabling the economies of scale that large industrial houses must achieve. This is where Private 5G is emerging as a powerful gamechanger.

Connectivity is what makes private 5G a force to be reckoned with. Private 5G networks can overcome the connectivity challenges by providing industries with highly reliable, ultra-fast, and super secure networks tailored to a manufacturer’s unique demands while offering greater control. These capabilities will prepare industrial sites for new 5G-enabled applications that can digitally transform their future operations.

What is a private 5G network?

A private 5G network is similar to a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) that uses a 5G capable spectrum to build a dedicated bandwidth and infrastructure for a company. Unlike a public network, a 5G network can be configured to meet the specific needs of an enterprise and can vary by site, depending on the work done at each location.

Reliable and super-quick wireless connectivity is critical for industrial use cases to branch operations, support a remote workforce, and streamline supply chain and manufacturing facilities. It enhances collaboration, scalability, information access, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. A purpose-built 5G network allows small and large facilities to create a customized 5G experience. It delivers performance, robust security, mission-critical reliability, and stable coverage, making the private 5G network a key enabler of Industry 4.0.

Private 5G for Industry 4.0 – Projections

By 2025, manufacturers and other businesses will spend $5.7 billion on private 4G LTE and 5G infrastructure at a CAGR of 43.4% against $945 million spent in 2019.

 – IDC Forecast

According to a Nokia & ABI research, more than 90% of the target pool are exploring the use of 4G/5G, and of these, 84% will deploy their own local private wireless networks.

Manufacturing was the most active vertical for private networks as of September 2020, accounting for 28% of all vertical activity.

 – Omdia Private LTE and 5G Tracker

Private 5G networks are on the rise. And fueling Industry 4.0. Here’s How

Private 5G not only meets the security, latency, and reliability requirements of existing wired networks for industrial processes and applications but also adds greater flexibility and mobility.

Private 5G networks build the foundation for more effective industrial operations in the future, offering compelling benefits to manufacturers as 5G-enabled technologies are the foundation of smart manufacturing and smart factories. With 5G powering emerging technologies like IoT, AI ML, robotics, AR VR, edge, etc., manufacturing is going from “work-in-progress to work-in-motion.”

From helping companies enhance worker safety, boost maintenance, enhance productivity, optimize operations, and unlock innovation in industrial environments, private 5G does it all and more. It will play a vital role in improving the density and performance of autonomous vehicles, robotics, mass-scale IoT, machine intelligence, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), predictive maintenance, digital twins, edge computing, computer vision, drones, and other automation technologies in the manufacturing domain. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

However, each 4.0 application will require superior connectivity and have unique requirements regarding latency, reliability, throughput, and the number of endpoints.  Therefore, Industry 4.0, untethered by private 5G networks, will drive productivity and enable new use cases and applications through extensive automation and management.

Here are a few use cases to illustrate the tremendous potential of private 5G in Industry 4.0.

Production Line Efficiency: Alleviates bandwidth and coverage concerns. Enable production line flexibility, improve efficiencies, minimize downtime, and support rapid reconfiguration of production lines to deliver new products.

Autonomous Guided Vehicles: Provides ultra-high bandwidth and reliable mobile handovers across production lines, dispatch areas, and warehousing. Enable use of real-time sensors coupled with image and video processing for safety and improved efficiency, ensuring Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) usage across manufacturing and warehousing facilities.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications: enables machine-to-machine communication to allow an interconnected network of machines and sensors to work cohesively to perform production tasks and optimize complex operations. Unlocks applications like robotics, autonomous production lines, smart warehousing, and automation. In a highly reliable and ultra-low latency Private 5G network, network slicing enables inter-device secure virtual networking.

End-to-End Logistics: Increases visibility with greater accuracy to better manage assets over their lifecycle. Supports the production facility, the input supply chain, warehousing, and the outbound supply chain. Helps enterprises deploy low-cost tracking devices to monitor and report the real-time location, status, and current environment of parts, equipment, assembly lines, supplies, finished products, and workforce. Allows seamless operation by enabling collaboration between humans and robots.

Predictive Maintenance: Enables large volumes of sensor data to be collected and reliably & quickly analyzed at high data rates. Supports device density at lower latency and centralizes predictive algorithms onto edge cloud rather than in dedicated, co-located hardware, allowing systems to provide predictive maintenance reliably and flexibly.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs): Provides higher bandwidth to help AMRs leverage built-in sensors and navigation tools to move around the facility most efficiently. Helps in minimizing response to obstacles and hazards en route. Also ensures better coverage (both indoors and outdoors) and improves efficiency, reliability, and accuracy of transportation of materials and equipment. Increases workforce safety & shop floor flexibility and reduces labor costs.

What’s next? The future?

There is a growing marketplace appetite for industrial-grade wireless networking to leverage the transformational benefits of digitalization and automation. With increasing spectrum availability, growing connected device density, and a fast-maturing 5G ecosystem, deployment costs will drop, and more futuristic technologies will emerge. These will make private 5G networks an increasingly desirable choice for the entire industrial ecosystem, for manufacturers and businesses of all sizes – big, small, or mid-sized. These standalone dedicated networks will be a gamechanger, especially for manufacturers who require 5G capabilities to implement the transformative applications that drive digital transformation, IoT, and smart factories.

Amantya’s Private 5G Solution – Astra5G

Amantya brings together 5G, IoT, Edge, Cloud Computing, MEC capabilities, industry expertise, process experience, and a robust partner ecosystem to deliver private 5G solutions that meet the unique requirements of our clients.

Amantya’s Astra5G is a 3GPP standard-compliant commercial-grade 5G solution that can have your private 5G network up and running in minutes. It is a high-performance, end-to-end, plug-and-play solution designed to meet the emerging needs of industrial enterprises exploring new-age 5G and IoT use cases. Comprising an FR1 Radio Access Network, 5G SA Core, and a high-performance User Plane Function, Astra5G delivers high speed, reliability, and security, improving the enterprise’s productivity, connectivity, and operational flexibility. It has a powerful management portal that allows enterprises to monitor, manage and customize their private 5G network as per requirement. So, whether you need to monitor the workforce, automate operations, streamline inventory, deploy your AGVs, secure sensitive operations or create/manage multi-local networks – you are just a click away.

We provide value by not just successfully connecting the software and hardware but by ensuring that our private 5G solution maximizes our clients’ operations.

Want to understand how you can capitalize on the humungous opportunities that Private 5G promises? And how can we partner with you on this journey? Please get in touch, and be ready to be transformed!