The U.K.’s Manufacturing Technology Centre houses advanced manufacturing equipment for digital manufacturing, additive manufacturing, automation and robotics, among others; the independent research and technology group focuses on process and manufacturing systems development across different industrial sectors, from aerospace to agriculture.
“It’s all about technology transformation. It’s not only about creating new things, but it’s deploying that transformation in the manufacturing industry,” explained Dr. Alejandra Matamoros, technology manager for MTC, in a session at the 5G Manufacturing Forum. That includes exploring 5G and how private networks can be used in legacy manufacturing environments.
When it comes to industrial connectivity, she went on, there is no universal standard—and that is a major challenge. “Manufacturing workshop environments are full of equipment with completely different type[s] of technologies, and each of those technologies providing … data in different formats or using different communication channels,” she said. “In many cases, there is not even data available.” Creating access to that data so that operations and processes can become more intelligent is a foundational effort—as is addressing security, she added, and heading off any potential disruptions and interference between disparate systems, that new connectivity could cause.
BT and nexGWorx worked with MTC to deploy a Release 15 5G network from Nokia with dedicated modems, servers and multi-access edge computing that is distributed from local radio antennas across specific areas at MTC, using shared access spectrum at 2.8-4.2 GHz. In different configurations, the network can achieve 100 Mbps or 175 Mbps on the uplink, and between about 700-800 Mbps in the downlink, with latency between 10-15 milliseconds, Matamoros reported, and she highlighted the experimental use case that it has enabled: 5G-enabled automation of a visual inspection system.
What MTC wanted to achieve with its initial work, Matamoros said, was to “expose our engineers to the capabilities of the network and the key aspects around the infrastructure and the deployment of that connectivity within the use case … using those capabilities … from 5G, but also our capabilities to serve industry around shop-floor connectivity, computer vision, automation and robotics.”
Automated visual inspection is a use case that can translate across many industries, she pointed out. “In many production environments, components of varied sizes and shapes are produced and need to be measured and checked to meet design tolerances. … Traditional in-person inspections can be timely, and are prone to human error and have not seamlessly recorded,” Matamoros said. Records and traceability of processes are also a common need across industrial verticals, she added.
MTC opted for automated inspection of common metal brackets, with the idea that in a complex assembly process, a number of different manufactured parts must be inspected each day before the assembly process can progress. So MTS started thinking about how it could bring more efficiency to such systems and ensure that parts meet the required standards.
Achieving the necessary level of performance for automated visual inspection took careful planning and analysis of both the MTC environment and the requirements of the use case that MTC wanted to enable.
“We have plenty of machines, plenty of metallic structures that could cause interference to the network,” Matamoros pointed out.
Dave Barrett, principal architect for 5G private network strategy and development at BT, said that building such a network “all starts from customer requirements, really. We start with the use cases, we start with the performance requirements, uplink, downlink latency requirements, we look at the coverage area, we look at device numbers, and we build on that. … There’s a lot of different aspects to that, in terms of the amount of resilience we need to build into a system, the amount of radios we need to provide—not only the coverage area that’s required, but the capacity in that coverage area, that’s really important. And … the connectivity piece, the transport is really, really critical, especially when you are joining and integrating legacy systems to 5G solutions. It’s is quite a big chunk of the work and the complexity that we have to design around.”
“You can’t just build a 5G network, you have to understand why you’re building it, where you’re building it, what it has to do,” said Andy MacKenzie, project director at nexGworx, which provided some of the technical communications and coordination glue among the involved parties, so to speak, that helped each of the partners understand the needs and capabilities and ultimately put it all together into a working network. “We were really keen to work in the beginning with [Matamoros] and her team to say, ‘What are we trying to show? Why we’re trying to show it? What does good look like? And how will we know when we’ve done that?’ And then work backwards.
“When we built this system, it was probably one of the first ones of its type ever deployed,” MacKenzie continued. “So we were learning, and we were all learning together. … It was in the middle of Covid, and things didn’t always go to plan. So our job was to try and manage that, going through and [making] sure we achieved what we had to achieve.”
Barrett said that in designing a new network system for a specific manufacturing use, it was important to “never make any assumptions in terms of the use cases” — in other words, clear communication with the industrial partner and understanding of a use case’s requirements were crucial. Then those requirements must be maintained. “Visibility is everything. I think when you’re putting in networks, the ability to see … and make sure you’ve designed a network where you can see what’s going on, to enable you to be proactive and resolve things quickly is really, really important,” as well as clear handover and acceptance of the network to the operating partner. “You can get networks that will … meet a base level of performance, but unless you are thorough and rigorous in what you accept as a complete solution, you’re going to leave yourself open [to problems],” he explained.
Private 5G networks will continue to evolve and expand the capabilities that they can offer to both greenfield and legacy manufacturing, as 5G standards themselves continue to progress.
“We’re developing lots of areas in which we can increase performance throughput, whether it’s from radio frame adaptation, and looking into the future, when we look at Release 16, 17, 18 to more … performance-enhancing features. There’s a lot to come with private networks,” said BT’s Barrett. “We see a really vast range across 5G use cases, from very, very low, telemetric-type data requirements to very, very high. And that’s one of the great things about 5G, is the flexibility to be able to provide dynamic quality of service with different use cases across different sites or same sites. It’s pretty powerful.”
You can watch the full session and additional content from 5G Manufacturing Forum on-demand here.
