The ‘private 5G’ partnership between system integrator Kyndryl and network vendor Nokia has so far resulted in 18 “large installations” on three continents, according to the former. Certain of them have covered enterprise environments of up to 50 square kilometres. The pair have a major public reference with Dow Chemical Company, covering 40 different production plants (and a ramp-up to 200, globally), each with “thousands of mechanical components”. The big 50-kilometre deployment it references in a new blog post is likely to be this one, in Texas. But the firm has also revealed a second major name on its books: Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem).
CPChem covers some of the same ground as plastics and chemicals producer Dow Chemical, as a manufacturer of chemicals and polymers. Like the Dow Chemical project, the new work with CPChem is based (at least in part) in Texas, at its headquarters north of Houston. But the scope covers eight facilities in total. Like Dow Chemical, the solution is also based on (“industrial-grade”) LTE in its first phase. It uses CBRS spectrum. “The company had outdoor Wi-Fi but wanted to transform its operations with high-performance connectivity indoors and outdoors, as well as advance connected worker initiatives,” writes Paul Savill, who leads Kyndryl’s global network and edge computing practice.
The post says the private LTE network supports “quick access to mission-critical business applications across 3,000 mobile devices”. It also talks about “real-time collaboration between teams anywhere in the plant” (via Microsoft Teams) – so workers can retrieve online manuals in the field to resolve repairs, or fill-out and resolve work orders online (via SAP). Kyndryl and Nokia have also integrated certain operational technology (OT) assets onto the network to support IoT-based machine monitoring and management. Kyndryl’s own OT-linked and AI-geared Industry 4.0 analytics application Kyndryl Bridge is being used to anticipate outages and potential downtime.
Kyndryl and Nokia designed and tested the setup with CPChem, and deployed eight LTE networks based on Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) solution in two batches – “to cover multiple sites concurrently”. The work will scale “down the road” to “private wireless deployments globally” and “further use cases and applications like 24/7 monitoring”, the blog states. Savill says: “By layering on other technologies like edge computing, IoT and augmented applications, the private LTE/5G networks will add next-level automation, enhanced worker safety and efficiencies into business-critical operations.”
Savill writes: “To be clear, the size and complexity of the deployments, the safety requirements of the facility plants, and some adversity to technological changes were considerable challenges. However, Kyndryl successfully deployed the Nokia DAC solution, and we regularly monitor and manage services to automate the identification and resolution of issues that could disrupt the network.”
He also makes the point – also made here, and made repeatedly in the enterprise section of RCR Wireless – that disillusionment around 5G in public networks should be considered separately of the early success of LTE and 5G in private networks. Savill says: “Are investments in the 5G market slowing? While that may be true with some of the public network use cases, we are seeing some incredible early results with large scale deployments of private wireless networks, particularly in heavy industrial environments… The benefits and capabilities enabled by the private wireless network deployments have quickly been realised.”
