The manufacturing sector is gradually adopting wireless and automation technologies as it embraces the Industry 4.0 concept, Alper Yegin, chair of the Technical Committee and vice-chair of LoRa Alliance, said during a presentation at the 5G Manufacturing Forum—available on demand here.
“When we’re looking at the manufacturing sector and how manufacturing companies have been adapting communication technologies, we see they are slowly cutting the cable. And to most extent, they are using wired technologies and the wireless has been moving in. But the whole industry has been adopting the wireless communication technologies pretty cautiously. And that is because they have to maintain their ongoing operations, and they cannot stop everything and then experiment with the technologies and then restart again, it’s like changing the engine of a flying airplane,” Yegin said.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for manufacturing firms
Commenting on the different technologies being adopted by manufacturing firms, the executive noted that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. “We see a mix of cellular, Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN technologies moving into the manufacturing sites. And we cannot also expect running sites to get connected overnight. All this adoption will have to go incremental. And it all starts by understanding the customer needs and getting detailed requirements. It’s not fully plug and play and there’s this boutique activity that needs to be carried out understanding the requirements and the solutions,” Yegin added.
According to Sunder Somasundaram, SVP of global IoT solutions at KORE Wireless, wireless technologies are emerging as the standard technology for the manufacturing field. “Based on what we see, most of our manufacturing customers still have a partially wired systems but we are actually seen a shift to cellular and also some Wi-Fi technologies. Based on what we’ve seen, at least with Wi Fi, a lot of customers are still on the fence, especially when it comes to security and how they’re leveraging it. So cellular is definitely emerging as a standard,” Somasundaram said.
Increasing adoption of sensors by manufacturing companies
He also noted that wireless technologies will be key in manufacturing environments as manufacturing firms are increasing adopting sensors which are installed on top of industrial equipment. “Customers want six or seven sensors on these industrial machines, measuring different aspects. So it’s increasingly pushing them towards that wireless world. So I think we’ll still obviously have Ethernet but then everything else is increasingly going to be wireless,” Somasundaram added.
Meanwhile, Bernd Kaercher, member of 5G ACIA, noted that the manufacturing sector is at the beginning of a gradual shift to wireless technologies.
“I think that wireless is mostly used at the moment when companies have pain points, like moving parts that should be connected. Companies are only starting to look into the new possibilities that they can achieve via wireless connectivity,” Kaercher said.
He added that manufacturing companies have a more cautious approach when they have to think about wireless technologies to replace the core connectivity that is vital for reliability. “So I think we are just in the beginning of the change, where participating stakeholders are in process to understand the benefits that they can achieve [with wireless technologies],” Kaercher added.
The executive also noted that wireless technologies are being used by manufacturing firms in a number of use cases that could boost the productivity of manufacturing facilities. “When you are able to increase the output of your production, then you get good arguments for new technologies. And that means reliability of the production. So something like predictive maintenance, if you are looking into your drives and watching them and get information before you get a failure, then this is a case where you can get acceptance,” Kaercher said.
Somasundaram also highlighted that one of the biggest drivers for the adoption of wireless technology in the manufacturing space is the fact that a significant portion of the manufacturing is actually driven by OEMs. “These OEMs make machinery that sits in their customer premises. When they come to us, they are looking for a solution that they can just ship as part of the machine,” he said. “They don’t want to necessarily work with the local wired infrastructure of the customer or ask them to install a router and configure it for their Wi-Fi. They want a box that is already plugged into their machinery. As soon as the machinery is set up and it’s powered on, the cellular router fires up and it starts sending the data and allows the customer then to remotely manage this asset without having to do anything at all.”
Yegin also noted that several use cases are gaining market traction, such as tracking of workers and equipment, which is essential for the safety of the workers, and the efficient utilization of resources. “And through that, manufacturing sites are able to have great savings and become more worker-friendly. And we also see a lot of predictive maintenance solutions coming into the market using vibration sensors, image sensors running the AI and machine learning. And such sensors have also accelerated thanks to the introduction of solid wireless communication technologies. So we see rapid adoption of such sensors and the whole market is pretty open for hundreds of different types of sensors to enter the scene. It’s going to take a little bit of time, but we already see automation entering into manufacturing sites,” he added.
