What’s so special about China’s first 5G five-star factory?
Latest update time：2024-09-11
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Some time ago,
ZTE's Nanjing Smart Riverside Factory obtained the 5G Five-Star Factory Certification issued by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Telecommunication Technology Certification Center, which attracted widespread attention in the industry.
I happened to have been to this factory, so today I plan to introduce it to you.
First of all, I would like to congratulate ZTE for winning this honor, and being the first in China.
The five-star 5G factory certification is not an ordinary certificate. You should know that there are millions of factories in China, and less than 3,000 of them have been certified as 5G factories. This time, ZTE Nanjing Intelligent Binjiang Factory has obtained the "five-star (highest level)" among 5G factories, which can be said to be "best of the best", one in a million.
The certificate was issued by China Telecommunication Technology Certification Center, which is affiliated to China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. People familiar with the communications industry know that China Academy of Information and Communications Technology is a scientific research unit directly under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and has taken the lead in and participated in the planning and technical system design of many domestic and foreign standards. China Telecommunication Technology Certification Center is one of the most professional and authoritative certification bodies in the field of information and communications in China. The value of this certificate is beyond doubt.
As we all know, since the official commercialization of 5G in China in 2019, the country has been vigorously building 5G networks and promoting the commercialization of 5G in all walks of life. The industrial manufacturing field, as a pillar industry of the national economy, is also a key direction for the implementation of 5G.
To promote this work, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guidelines for the Construction of 5G Fully Connected Factories" in 2022. Later, at the end of 2023, the "2023 5G Factory List" was released, with more than 300 projects listed. It was also at that time that the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology launched the 5G factory certification work, conducting rating and certification across the country.
After talking about the background of this certification, let’s take a look at what unique skills ZTE Nanjing Intelligent Riverside Factory has to obtain the first five-star 5G factory certification.
█Using
5G to create 5G
ZTE Nanjing Intelligent Riverside Factory is well-known not only in Nanjing, but also in the entire Yangtze River Delta region.
The factory officially started construction in 2018, with an investment of about 20 billion yuan. At the beginning of construction, the factory was designated as a benchmark demonstration base for 5G smart manufacturing. From design to construction to operation, it is carried out in accordance with the highest standards.
ZTE is a top expert in 5G, digitalization, and intelligence. Therefore, the industry's latest digital technologies, including 5G machine vision, 5G cloud AGV, 5G cloud PLC, digital twins, etc., are all used, and the technological content is directly maximized.
For this factory, ZTE shouted a loud slogan at the time -
"Use 5G to manufacture 5G"
. Its main products are 5G base stations and servers.
The entire factory is actually a large park covering an area of 1,300 acres. Inside the factory, there are multiple departments and facilities including 5G base station smart factory, server storage product smart factory, 5G industrial Internet innovation center, 5G smart data center, raw material three-dimensional sorting center and finished product three-dimensional sorting center.
In addition to the manufacturing workshop, the factory also has R&D and office areas, making it a comprehensive modern production base.
The factory's 5G network coverage rate reaches 100%, realizing full connectivity of production factors. It has industry-leading automated, digital, and intelligent production lines that cover each process of assembly, testing, and packaging, and has end-to-end advanced manufacturing process capabilities from raw materials to finished products.
The above paragraph may sound a bit confusing to you. Next, I will talk about what 5G has brought to this factory based on the scenario.
█From
campus network to field network
The "Guidelines for Building 5G Fully Connected Factories" clearly states that the connection levels of the industrial Internet include three levels: "factory level", "workshop level" and "production line level".
The application and implementation process of "5G+Industrial Internet" is generally divided into two stages.
The first stage is to build a "factory-level"
"campus network"
, also known as an "industry virtual private network". This network is mainly based on IT networks and mainly meets some cloud needs. In most cases, it is shared with public user networks.
The second stage is to build
a "field network"
for the "workshop level" and "production line level"
, also called the "production field network".
The "field network" is mainly based on the OT (operational) network, which is the network truly used in the production line and has higher requirements in terms of network latency, jitter, and reliability. It needs to fully ensure reliable connection in the OT domain and also needs to be able to perfectly support local computing power deployment.
Traditional "field network" communication protocols are mainly
fieldbus technology
and
industrial Ethernet technology
. The former has higher reliability and the latter has a higher transmission rate. Both have been accepted by the industry and are common industry standards.
The rise of 5G has brought new options to users. Its advantages are very obvious, that is, there is no need to lay power supply lines and network cables, and it can connect more monitoring and control points.
As a wireless communication technology, 5G has outstanding performance in network speed, capacity, latency, reliability and other aspects, and is fully capable of meeting the needs of "field network".
█
Cut off the "braids" of PLC
ZTE's Nanjing Smart Riverside Factory is based on a 5G network and uses 5G cloud PLC, which is a typical example of 5G replacing traditional wired communication protocols.
The Chinese name of PLC is programmable logic controller. It is the cornerstone of industrial control and the core of traditional on-site industrial control network. In the past, PLC was based on wired network technologies such as industrial Ethernet and fieldbus, which were difficult to deploy, had high failure rates, and were difficult to adjust and move. Moreover, the ecosystem was closed, the degree of localization was low, and the cost was high.
Today, factories have fully adopted 5G cloud PLC, which not only cuts off the "braids" and makes deployment easier, but also makes the ecosystem more open and costs significantly reduced.
Robotic arm in the production workshop
The "flexible manufacturing" we often hear about now refers to the production system with higher flexibility and stronger adaptability, which can adjust the production line at any time to meet the needs of different types of production tasks. 5G cloud PLC has greatly increased the flexibility of the production line and is conducive to flexible production. The high-performance 5G flexible automated production line has shortened the line change time of the production line by 95% (the line change time of the whole machine assembly has been shortened from 30 minutes to 3 minutes).
Some southbound applications of PLC (interaction between PLC and the devices or sensors it directly controls) have higher requirements for latency and reliability, generally <10ms@99.999%. At this time, 5G uRLLC and TSN need to be introduced to provide assistance.
You may have heard of TSN, which stands for Time-Sensitive Networking.
Combining 5G and TSN (Time Sensitive Network), deploying TSN between PLC and field equipment can achieve high-quality deterministic delay transmission of control signals. Deploying TSN between PLCs can achieve high-precision synchronous transmission of collaborative signals. Deploying TSN between IT networks and OT networks can achieve uploading of production data to information systems and sending of control management information to production equipment.
In summary, ZTE Nanjing Intelligent Riverside Factory has implemented 5G in depth, providing a stable and high-speed data channel for on-site production factors, laying a solid foundation for improving production efficiency and building flexible production lines.
Advantages of the “ Cloud
-Edge-End” architecture
In addition to the wireless air interface, the evolution and upgrade of the 5G network architecture has also brought many advantages to ZTE's Nanjing Smart Riverside Factory.
As a communication network technology, the core value of 5G lies in the efficient transmission of data and the flexible scheduling of computing power.
After 5G introduces edge computing, it is possible to build a "cloud-edge-end" collaborative computing architecture to meet the computing power requirements of different scenarios such as "factory level", "workshop level" and "production line level". In this way, the most suitable business system can be deployed nearby, minimizing the delay caused by network detours and reducing data security risks.
ZTE's computing server (R5300)
Moreover, edge computing power can be deployed within the park and managed by the enterprise itself, so that data does not leave the factory. Computing resources and upper-level applications can be managed uniformly according to the enterprise's security strategy, which greatly reduces the risk of data security.
In the factory park, in addition to deploying 5G base stations separately, 5G core network elements such as UDM, AMF, SMF, and UPF can also be deployed separately to realize the sinking of these functions. When problems occur in external export transmission, these network elements can ensure that the 5G network services in the park are not interrupted and will not affect the normal operation of the production system.
█
AI, empowering intelligent manufacturing
Since ZTE Nanjing Smart Riverside Factory is an intelligent manufacturing base, it must also contain a large number of AI elements and scenarios.
Here, ZTE has realized production line data collection and control, AI quality inspection, intelligent warehousing, AGV transfer, as well as smart security in the park, energy consumption optimization, convenient passage, and safe production based on 5G network + Digital Nebula (an overall capability architecture platform created by ZTE to help enterprises with digital transformation), realizing the digital twin of the entire park and setting an industry benchmark.
Taking the quality inspection scenario as an example, they adopted the "5G + machine vision" cloud quality inspection solution to replace manual product inspection, and the missed detection rate was reduced from 3% to 0. In other words, the missed detection rate of manual visual inspection is 3%. After adopting machine vision quality inspection, the missed detection rate was directly reduced to 0, and the effect is very obvious.
"5G+Machine Vision" Intelligent Detection
█Five
-star factory, well deserved
There are many scenarios for the implementation of digital intelligence in ZTE’s Nanjing Smart Riverside Factory.
According to preliminary statistics, they have currently completed business demonstrations in 24 categories and 110 5G converged application scenarios. The number of 5G industry terminals has exceeded 400, and they have obtained 19 core patents (20 invention patents and 16 industry standards), and the number continues to increase.
With the support of advanced digital technology, the factory's production capacity has been greatly improved compared to traditional factories. It can produce 50,000 AAUs (5G antennas), 70,000 5G small base stations, and 40,000 servers per month. The manufacturing cost of 5G and server products has been reduced by 23%, and the number of production line operators has been reduced by 53%.
5G AGV unmanned transport vehicle
It is worth mentioning that in addition to increasing production capacity, the factory has also put a lot of thought into energy conservation and emission reduction. Based on the energy consumption characteristics of the factory, they have implemented energy conservation and consumption reduction in many aspects, such as automatic power off at high temperature, high temperature environment optimization, temperature reduction time, and high temperature variable power testing. The energy consumption of a single product has been reduced by 9.3%.
Today, ZTE's Nanjing Smart Riverside Factory has become a true 5G factory benchmark, winning numerous awards. Some of the factory's mature applications and technologies have not only been shared and promoted in other ZTE bases, but have also been referenced and replicated by many manufacturing companies across the country.
This factory has fully verified the feasibility of "5G+Industrial Internet", greatly enhanced the influence of the Industrial Internet, and promoted the development of the entire emerging industrial chain of fully connected factories.
Conclusion
After visiting the factory that day, I was deeply shocked. China has only been reforming and opening up and promoting industrial modernization for a few decades. From nothing to something, from weak to strong, now we can independently build such a powerful factory and reach the world's leading level. This is the result of continuous struggle and innovation, proving that we Chinese can also master the best technology in the world.
Looking to the future, this technological race will continue. I hope that more 5G five-star factories will emerge in China, promote the comprehensive upgrading of the domestic manufacturing industry, and accelerate our country's transformation from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing powerhouse.
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