Connected Factory

The 5G-ENCODE Project—partially funded by the DCMS as part of their 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme—has delivered a private 5G testbed within the National Composites Centre that monitors and tracks time-sensitive assets such as composite materials to drive operational efficiencies.
High precision indoor tracking is also being rolled out elsewhere; at the Ericsson 5G Factories in Sweden and Estonia, low-power tags on pallets, equipment and materials are transmitting real-time location data to the cloud, providing decision-makers with complete visibility of objects and machines. This enables true digital twins for traceability of inventory, reducing loss of assets and ultimately improving end-to-end efficiency. Ericsson estimates 25% efficiency gains compared to manual asset tracking.
Further afield, engineers from Verizon and Corning are exploring how the factory of the future can use 5G to dramatically speed data collection, allow machines to communicate with each other in near real-time, and wirelessly track and inspect inventory using 5G-connected cameras.
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