II. Industrials

Making electric grids and factories smarter

Industrials:

Making electric grids and factories smarter

Electricity completely changed and expanded the industrials sector along with the lives of countless people. In much the same way, 5G has the potential to transform businesses and communities. Manufacturers have already spent billions of dollars on their digital transformation, and the advent of 5G is poised to change their operations even more. Deploying a software-driven distributed and disaggregated 5G network can reduce costs and will position compute and critical services where they can provide the greatest benefits. Because it can support greater resiliency, higher flows of data, and reduced latency, 5G is likely to lead to new systems and solutions that simply weren’t feasible in the past. Asset monitoring and grid management are two key areas where 5G can benefit the industrials sector. Additionally, factories need to be more flexible as opposed to fixed configuration manufacturing pipeline. The pipeline will be more modular allowing flexible reconfiguration and reuse of the modules. In some cases, conveyers are replaced with robots that allow production splits and merges where stations are re-used.

Also, in pipeline quality control allows discrete modular testing allowing recycling of errored builds and avoiding concatenation of product only to find a piece doesn't work at the end of the build. This is the 'fast fail' notion and less costly recovery. 5G-enabled smart grids and smart factories are on the horizon, powering connected devices that assess their surroundings and provide data that can help people make better decisions.

5G and asset monitoring and maintenance

With 5G’s enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), mobile manufacturing apps will be faster and able to connect across more networks, so operators and machinery in different areas can easily communicate even in challenging environments. Sensors transmitting data can alert operators, applications, and machines to the status of machinery and operations. Depending on the situation connectivity may be cellular (4G/5G), private network, or Wi-Fi/Wi-Fi 6. Having a software-defined converged network provides the freedom to use the connectivity best suited for the job and environment.

The data from all of these connected meters and sensors can be analyzed quickly because the distributed network design positions the compute services closer to or co-located on premises. You can effectively monitor and maintain systems and equipment, and the analytics can provide insights to help optimize equipment operation and prevent faults before they occur. Remote monitoring and maintenance allow for better visibility and control, which not only leads to lower staff costs, but also reduced downtime and costs.

5G and grid management

The next generation of smart grid features will be powered by 5G because it will improve how utilities communicate with their
grid systems. The increase in the number of sensors will provide better fault location and isolation, and 5G will simplify connection
to remote sites in the distribution network. It will also be easier to reroute power in the grid automatically because of the
improved communication between high-speed devices.

More connected grid assets will mean more active, high-speed, and reliable two-way grid management. Better grid management
will open the door to increased renewable energy, better efficiency, and faster outage restoration. 5G also brings much lower power requirements, which improves the active monitoring of utilities like water and gas that need to operate networks over long distances on battery power alone. 5G could have a profound effect on our ability to monitor water quality and detect and repair water and gas leaks. The network slicing features of 5G have the potential to improve security and make it possible to comply with industry standards and required service levels that have historically been limited by LTE reliability for mission-critical applications.

Industry untethered

With the speed and resiliency of 5G, devices that were tethered to a wired connection now can be set free. Wireless capability means that reconfigurable factory floors are now feasible. Additionally, autonomous factory vehicles can move parts and product faster and more safely.