Nokia is to equip a major state-run industrial training facility in Brazil with 5G and AI to accelerate Industry 4.0 skills, trials, and deployments in the region.
The Finnish vendor will deploy connectivity and analytics solutions at the country’s National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI-SP) in São Caetano do Sul, in São Paulo state, a well-known facility for mechatronics training. The facility’s digital factory setup, equipped with new 5G and AI tools, will provide training and testing for industrial engineers.
Research from the Federation of Industries of São Paulo State (FIESP), in partnership with SENAI-SP, says 90 per cent of local companies familiar with Industry 4.0 agree it will boost productivity, bit that only 30 per cent have started along the road to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies.
The industrial sector accounted for one in five jobs (21 per cent) in Brazil in 2017, according to data from World Bank. The country has committed to investing in technologies to boost its industrial output and maintain global competitiveness, noted Nokia.
“Smarter applications of connectivity, industrial IoT and automation will increase the efficiency at which businesses operate, ultimately improving the overall rate of production,” said Nokia in a statement.
Nokia has a number of major Industry 4.0 engagements in Latin America, including with the ConectarAGRO collective to leverage new IoT technologies in agriculture and with Telefónica Peru and the Las Bambas copper mine, where the pair are deploying a private LTE network to enable new industrial automation and intelligence.
In São Paulo, SENAI-SP will work with Nokia to research and develop new technologies and to train professionals across the country in Industry 4.0. Its lab in São Paulo will serve all its 166 sites across the country.
Nokia will deploy 4G and 5G as a platform for industrial automation and intelligence at the lab; it will also provide ‘passive optical LAN’ (POL), providing high capacity for local area networks (LAN), and its private network and edge computing solution, called ‘digital automation cloud’ (NDAC).
Paulo Skaf, president at FIESP and SENAI-SP, said: “This will accelerate Brazil’s Industry 4.0 efforts… [It] reinforces SENAI-SP’s commitment to state-of-the-art technologies with a focus on activities that increase enterprise competitivity and workers’ productivity, strengthening SENAI-SP’s role in industry development to ensure that economic growth and generation of employment and income are achieved.”
Osvaldo Di Campli, head of Nokia in Latin America, said: “With 5G adoption taking off, it’s vital that Brazil’s operators, enterprises and industries are well-positioned to reap the benefits of our Future X architecture from connectivity to digital value platforms and security.”
