During Hannover Messe Digital Days, Cesim Demir, CTO of the Enterprise Business Group Western Europe for Huawei Technologies, an ICT provider, gave a presentation on how factories can leverage connectivity technologies for industrial competition.
Smart production has a number of benefits, Demir explained, including new business models that help companies stay competitive, innovate on production processes and shorten time-to-market, leading to lower costs and an enhanced customer experience. To achieve all of this, several key factors need to be considered. Among them:
- Intelligence
- Customization
- Connectivity
- Flexibility
- Scalability
- Manageability
- Productivity
- Transparency
- Predictability
According to Demir, part of the reason there is a slow progression for smart production processes is the lack of use cases. “All the digitalization is mainly based on the use cases,” said Demir. “The use cases are mainly all about pain points and bottlenecks in the production.”
He pointed out the overarching agenda for transforming traditional production to smart production begins with a single step: connectivity. “Everything needs to be connected—everything is getting enabled to be sent, intelligence needs to be embedded,” he said.
A smart supply chain, smart parts and smart warehousing all contribute to a fully integrated smart factory infrastructure. Demir discussed four use cases for 5G and Wi-Fi 6 in which Huawei has taken part.
One case was about using 5G or Wi-Fi 6 for AGV control. In this case, the use of better network connection resulted in 40% higher AGV efficiency, less interruptions and human interventions and faster troubleshooting.
The next case Demir presented was about asset tracking, which would come into play in warehousing operations. Here, Wi-Fi 6 and RFID were used for tag reading and direction determination that resulted lower operation costs in the warehouse.
The next case was about smart logistics for delivery. “There are hundreds of trucks coming every day to the plant,” he said. Smart logistics through Huawai’s IoT platform was used to guide trucks for a better delivery rate and lower output time for the shift data report.
The last use case Demir discussed involved software download final assembly in which a Wi-Fi 6-enabled plant was able to download up to 10 GB of data. Software download final assembly/data upload test cars through Wi-Fi 6 allowed for the transition from parameter and data to a full software download, which contributed to a 40% lower operation cost.
Other use case categories for smart factory connectivity are inspection robots, connected wireless sensors, smart helmets for workers and predictive maintenance.
According to Demir, edge computing and Big Data are also factors for smart production, but plant connectivity is still important. “Wireless technology is one of the biggest enablers of digitalization,” he said.