Finns and Aussies have combined in a high-tech Industry 4.0 pact to… brew the perfect pint of beer (naturally). As part of its long running partnership with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), extended last year in a five-year research partnership and formalised with the opening of an innovation facility on the UTS campus, Finnish outfit Nokia has help to build a 5G-connected microbrewery to demo new leaps in smart manufacturing.
The pair have claimed “the successful operation of the world’s first private wireless and 5G connected digital microbrewery”. The new brewery (‘Industry 4.0 Nano-Brewery’) is on the university campus (naturally), within its new Advanced Manufacturing and Industrial Data Science testbed at the UTS Tech Lab.
Nokia was appointed a year ago to install a private 5G network at the facility, to develop 5G use cases with industrial partners. The brewery has an identical physical twin set up in TU Dortmund University in Germany, and a cloud-based digital twin to optimise the brewing process at both sites, they said. A press statement talks of an “international network” – which presumably means the Brits, Dutch, and South Africans will join the party.
Production data is captured “at every step of the brewing process”, the pair said, and combined with the same from Dortmund and the cloud to optimise the process. A statement said the installation “enables thirsty researchers to perfect the art of brewing in the twenty-first century using digital automation”. The UTS Tech Lab campus uses Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud wireless network solution, plus Nokia gateways and small cells.
Various other Industry 4.0 projects are under way at the UTS testbed, also, including the national government-funded Nokia/UTS 5G Connected Cobots project. A number of use casesare being developed with UTS to support Nokia’s work with Australian telco TPG Telecom to deliver mobile private network solutions for the Australian mining and energy sectors.
Professor Jochen Deuse, director of the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing at UTS, said: “Our goal is to promote Industry 4.0 principles to local industry by offering a testbed that gives partners the keys to improve their own manufacturing processes and gain business intelligence. Our international collaboration with TU Dortmund and Nokia allows us to globalise the outcomes of our testbed.”
Tommi Uitto, president of mobile networks at Nokia, said: “UTS’s Industry 4.0 facility is an exciting environment for developing and testing new 5G use cases. In the digital microbrewery, we showcase how 5G private wireless networks and cloud-based technologies help optimise the brewing process and move ever closer to achieving the perfect pint.”
