Thousands of 5G smart factories are in bloom

Looking back at the processes of previous industrial revolutions, we will find that there is one thing that is a necessary condition for every significant increase in industrial productivity - that is roads.

At the end of the 18th century, steamships traveling on the canals gave rise to the rise of factories of all sizes in England.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the railways that crossed the Eurasian continent pushed the world's factories into the modern era in the true sense.

At the end of the last century, the invisible network road awakened, and countless factories completed digitalization and networking on broadband.

No matter what kind of road it is, as long as it can carry more means of production and improve industrial efficiency, it will become the best assistant for factories and even an opportunity for a new industrial revolution.

Today, AI, cloud computing, and the Industrial Internet are brewing a new industrial revolution, and the industrial path of this era is becoming clearer. 5G networks are a crucial part of this revolution.

How 5G can empower industry and boost China's manufacturing has received a lot of attention and discussion in the past two years. However, looking at these discussions, we can find that most of them focus on macro-technical logic and industrial direction. The discussion that can really go deep into factories and build clear and executable solutions is still in its infancy and needs to be explored and revealed.

On May 8, 2021, the 5G Smart Manufacturing Summit was held in Shenzhen. At the summit, all parties in the industry jointly conducted multi-angle and multi-level discussions on the implementation of 5GtoB in the manufacturing industry, with particular attention to the in-depth integration of 5G networks and vertical manufacturing. During the period, Ding Yun, Executive Director of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and President of Carrier BG, delivered a keynote speech entitled "5GtoB Accelerates the Digital Transformation of the Manufacturing Industry". Ding Yun believes that after more than two years of practice and exploration, 5GtoB has solved many key breakpoints in technology and ecology. 2021 is undoubtedly the first year of 5GtoB commercialization. Next, we must accelerate the transformation of model houses into commercial houses that can be replicated on a large scale. We hope that the entire industry chain will work together to light up 1,000 5G smart factories.

Let us take this opportunity to review the origins of the key proposition of "5G + manufacturing". Then we may start to answer the following question: How are a thousand 5G factories budding?

Spectrum Reading: What does 5G bring to factories?

Before discussing 5G factories, we still need to answer a prerequisite question: what does 5G mean to the manufacturing industry, to factories, workers, and industrial processes.

Before planting the flower of 5G factory, we must first identify the accurate flower spectrum, and then take advantage of the situation to complete the implementation plan. Overall, 5G, as an upgrade of wireless network, can connect industrial equipment, industrial scenes, and industrial systems that cannot be covered by fixed network or whose original network solutions are not effective, so as to efficiently and quickly transmit data as production materials.

Compared with previous wireless and fixed network solutions, the 5G network running between factories is more flexible and can ensure real-time and efficient collaboration of large amounts of data. We can see the industry core brought by 5G from several specific factory cases.

1. Changes in the flexibility of industrial production lines.

In industrial scenarios, assembly line production is the basis of efficiency. But high-speed industrial production lines also bring a problem, that is, once a certain link needs to be adjusted, it will affect the entire body, and it will take a lot of time and manpower to reallocate the network of the entire production line. But with the help of 5G, industrial production lines can obtain flexible production capabilities with real-time linkage. In the mobile phone production line of Huawei's southern factory, traditional wiring reaches 90,000 meters of network cables. The production line needs to be adjusted every six months, and each adjustment requires two weeks of shutdown. One day of shutdown affects the output value by more than 10 million. The use of 5G technology to achieve wireless and flexible connection of various equipment on the production line, shortening the adjustment time from two weeks to two days, can bring huge value optimization to the automated production line.

2. Remote control of industrial equipment.

In industrial scenarios such as energy, steel, docks, and chemicals, there are many industrial equipment such as overhead cranes, cranes, and forklifts that require manual operation. However, their production operating environments are often harsh and pose safety risks. With the support of 5G networks, such equipment can be combined with video backhaul and AI recognition, changing from manual operation to remote control, and even achieving simultaneous control of multiple devices, thereby greatly improving factory operating efficiency and worker safety index.

3. Implementation of AI in industrial scenarios.

Another important job in the factory is patrol inspection and quality inspection, which often requires workers to observe and compare repeatedly for a long time. On the one hand, manual observation is inefficient and there is bound to be a false detection rate. On the other hand, this kind of work is very boring and difficult to do for a long time. The most basic and critical ability of AI technology is recognition. Through machine vision technology, a large amount of repetitive work that originally required manual inspection can be replaced by AI. The 5G network can support the business model of large-scale video backhaul of machine vision systems, as well as the data usage model of cloud training and edge-side deployment, and is the best assistant for AI.

4. Intelligent upgrade of logistics vehicles.

In the logistics and warehousing scenarios, AGVs can be said to be the most popular new force. However, the problem with AGVs is that it is difficult to complete the joint operation of multiple AGVs, thereby improving the efficiency of intelligent warehousing operations. With the support of 5G networks, 2-4 AGVs can be coordinated, and two vehicles can complete synchronization in 20 milliseconds. Similar capabilities have been implemented in many factories.

It is not difficult to see that the blessing of 5G network for factories can penetrate into multiple links of factories and solve many kinds of problems. On this basis, we need to move to the next step, that is, how to cultivate industrial soil and build an executable plan for 5G to light up factories.

Cultivating the soil: an executable solution to light up the 5G factory

5G lights up factories and deeply empowers industrial scenarios. Obviously, it is necessary to aggregate and organize the originally isolated industrial forces to form a "5G+manufacturing" solution that can be reused and promoted. Only with a high degree of industrial collaboration can the cost of manufacturing enterprises applying effective 5G solutions be reduced and the process shortened.

In order to realize this plan, Ding Yun introduced in detail the one-stop solution of "sales, operation, and service" for 5GtoB that Huawei has built after more than two years of practice, together with operators and partners. Overall, Huawei's 5GtoB solution consists of four parts, including "5GtoB basic network", "5GtoB network capability opening", "5GtoB application enabling" and "5GtoB industry market".

"5GtoB basic network" is the foundation of the 5G solution. Only by continuously improving the quality of the 5G network and the level of operation and maintenance management can we fundamentally attract manufacturing users to choose relevant solutions.

As for the capability opening part of the 5GtoB network, Huawei hopes to organize the capabilities into products for release, so that enterprise users and developers can easily access 5GtoB services and continuously manage, upgrade, and optimize their own 5G capabilities.

"5GtoB Application Enabling" takes the form of an application innovation center, allowing developers and system integrators to develop, test and deploy 5G capabilities on an application enabling platform, thereby making 5GtoB application development more efficient and application integration simpler, building a bridge from 5G network capabilities to 5GtoB applications, and achieving agile business development and launch.

The "5GtoB Industry Market" is a digital supermarket built on the cloud. Enterprise users can order the 5G industry solutions they need in one stop in the digital supermarket according to different scenarios.

Based on the 5GtoB one-stop solution, Huawei hopes to work closely with operators and application partners to gradually achieve 5G-related technical and industrial collaboration, and drive the digitalization and intelligent upgrading of the manufacturing industry through technological innovation.

With the help of such implementation solutions, more and more factories have begun to light up their own 5G stars. The grand blueprint of 5G industry may already be in bud.

Buds: 5G factories are blooming

At the 5G Smart Manufacturing Summit, we can see that many representative industrial enterprises and industrial parks have completed value innovation and industrial upgrading based on 5G. These cases are not only the value proof of 5GtoB one-stop solutions, but also the pioneers and demonstrations of 5G-enabled manufacturing solutions and large-scale replication.

These brightly blooming 5G factories may be the old factories in your hometown’s memories, a certain future.

Midea, which provides home appliances to countless Chinese families, has promoted the Internet of Things upgrade through 5G private networks and AI industrial brains. The factory has realized the extraction of business data and carried out closed-loop improvement and optimization control of anomalies in the entire manufacturing process; it has realized all-round, digital and intelligent management and control based on the 5G network, and achieved quality transparency and rigidity through intelligent inspection; it has realized cloud-based collaboration of the supply chain based on the wide area connection capability of 5G and connected the entire supply chain process; it has built an intelligent logistics platform based on the 5G network, connected logistics time, and carried out all-round digital optimization of pre-production, intra-production, and post-production logistics; it has developed intelligent manufacturing and digital production based on the 5G network, built a benchmark factory for intelligent manufacturing, and realized the interconnection of people, equipment, materials, machines, and products.