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Make no mistake , the future for 5G in manufacturing looks very bright
stay idle waiting for a human to intervene and / or go back home to restart their journey . Significant productive gains can be achieved with more reliable connectivity . And in most cases even 4G will suffice in this application .
Finally , I think indoor positioning location analytics using 5G radios to help pinpoint devices have helped growth . Both have the potential to eliminate the need for other technologies such as BLE or UWB . It ’ s still early for this application but I am a strong believer that the impact on the manufacturing industry could prove significant .
With 5G becoming better at low-power IoT and positioning , it is easy to see the potential that it offers to eliminate silos generated by multiple wireless technologies working simultaneously . This has been the vision of the industry since the beginning and it ’ s already happening .
Make no mistake , the future for 5G in manufacturing looks very bright . We are still a couple of years behind a significant portion of PLCs being connected via 5G , but it will eventually happen , adding more flexibility to industrial players . In the last few months not only are large conglomerates such as Mercedes or Bosch implementing 5G , but also medium-sized players . A noteworthy deployment has been seen through ACOME in France . The company , which designs and manufactures fiber optic cables for the deployment of superfast broadband to subscribers has deployed a 5G standalone network and successfully implemented most of the use cases mentioned above .
To summarize , my key message to the manufacturing industry is that now is the right time to start testing 5G . There is no need to start replacing ethernet-connected PLCs with 5G , but from my experience , deploying 5G promises to simplify the deployment of use cases that can improve productivity without the hassle of poor connectivity . I think there ’ s no better time for factories to start testing non-critical elements with 5G and to be prepared for a future where most of the connected elements in a factory will run on its premises . ■
For a list of the sources used in this article , please contact the editor .
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