What Does 5G Do for Smart Manufacturing?

In order to optimize industrial production, sensors collect countless data from machines and systems. However, data storage and analysis is usually decentralized and time-shifted. Fraunhofer researchers are now investigating how wireless communication via 5G can remedy this situation.

In the research project "5G-SMART: 5G for smart manufacturing", the project partners are building 5G networks in real manufacturing environments to demonstrate, test and further develop the potential of 5G for production.

The consortium around the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT is testing the interaction between 5G and state-of-the-art production systems such as remote-controlled industrial robotics, wireless process monitoring in production and mobile robotics. And this throughout Europe in a Ericsson factory in Sweden, in the machine tool factory of the Fraunhofer IPT in Aachen and in a Bosch semiconductor factory in Reutlingen.

The project partners are convinced that the new 5G mobile radio standard is suitable for making manufacturing processes more flexible and adaptive than before, improving the quality of components, reducing costs and thus increasing productivity. The application partners are working with mobile communications providers to define the requirements for 5G networks that are tailored to the needs of the manufacturing industry, for example the integration of 5G in communication standards such as time-sensitive networking (TSN) and cloud platforms that enable flexible machine control with low latency and high reliability.

Together with the project partners, the Fraunhofer IPT is developing new 5G-capable, industrially usable sensors and radio modules and testing them in its own machines and systems on the basis of concrete manufacturing tasks. This should make it possible to record process data with latencies of just a few milliseconds, evaluate it in real time, and thus optimize process monitoring throughout the entire industrial process chain. This enables the engineers to detect process deviations and machine states in good time and to react to the machine within short reaction times via control commands in order to ensure the production of the components in the required quality and production times. For this purpose, the Fraunhofer IPT uses its existing 5G test environment in Aachen, which the Swedish mobile phone provider Ericsson installed in the institute's machine hall last year.

Integrated sensor technology, wirelessly connected to cloud-based analysis tools via 5G mobile radio connections, can help manufacturing companies of all sizes and industries to gain valuable data and process it into information in the future. During their research project, the partners will investigate which concrete business models 5G offers for manufacturing companies, suppliers and mobile operators in order to further accelerate the introduction of 5G for production.