Skip to main content

Samsung to showcase benefits of 5G in Industry 4.0 with IBM, IMDA & M1 in Singapore

IBM, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), M1 Limited (M1) and Samsung recently announced Singapore’s first 5G Industry 4.0 trial, to demonstrate the transformative impact of 5G for enterprises and drive the next bound of Singapore’s digital economy. This announcement was part of IBM’s edge computing solutions for the 5G era announced at IBM Think 2020. A press release on the Singapore regulator IMDA's website said:

The trial aims to develop insights and showcase benefits of 5G in Industry 4.01. It will be an innovation model that allows for development, testing and benchmarking of 5G-enabled solutions that can be applied across various industries.

This partnership consists of the following three main areas:
  • 5G Innovation: The trial aims to design, develop, test and benchmark 5G-enabled industry 4.0 solutions that can be applied across various industries.
  • 5G Solution Showcase: Solutions developed will be featured at IBM’s Industry 4.0 Studio2 5G Solutions Showcase. The showcase will feature Industry 4.0 solutions powered by 5G and leveraging capabilities such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence. The aim is to help proliferate 5G solutions to different industry sectors in Singapore.
  • 5G Solutions Roll-out: IBM and Samsung will evaluate successful solutions developed during the project for possible use in their operations in a broad range of markets and sectors.


5G’s capabilities such as faster data transfer and more-rapid response times, when coupled with other transformative technologies like AI, can enable significant improvements to manufacturing processes. The project will test 5G-enabled use cases for manufacturing, focusing on three main areas:
  • Automated visual inspection using AI for image recognition and video analytics;
  • Improved equipment monitoring and predictive maintenance using AI-enabled acoustic insights; and
  • Assembly and debugging using augmented reality to improve productivity and quality
The trial at the Industry 4.0 Studio will commence in Q2, 2020 and will be conducted at IBM Singapore’s Centre of Competency (CoC) for Smart Factory Operating Model for sharing of ideas and best practices. This makes IBM Singapore the ideal location for the trial, and solutions could be ultimately rolled out to other IBM Manufacturing sites, globally.

Successful 5G-enabled Industry 4.0 use-cases developed from this trial could be demonstrated for manufacturing enterprises and applied to production, service, quality control, and testing across a broad range of industries.

IBM will implement and test Industry 4.0 use cases that will leverage IBM’s AI, IoT, edge, and augmented reality technologies, and network architecture built on IBM systems using open solutions infrastructure from Red Hat.

Together with Samsung as network and mobile solution provider and M1 as the telco provider, 5G network framework and skillsets could be established, allowing the solutions and the 5G framework know-how to be rolled out from Singapore and commercialised in other countries.

A Samsung Insight provided more information on the collaboration between Samsung and IBM:

Manufacturing facilities present some of the most exciting opportunities for 5G network adoption due to their size, complexity and the high level of automation already in place. 5G-enabled technology can help manufacturers improve core performance goals like minimizing equipment downtime, improving safety and security, reducing defects and increasing manufacturing flexibility.

IBM and Samsung have been exploring several Industry 4.0 use cases:
  • Manufacturers can take advantage of visual recognition and video analytics, as well as acoustic insights, to understand operating performance of equipment in real time and rapidly trouble-shoot issues, supporting improved uptime and reduced defects. Both of these technologies require the transfer and analysis of massive amounts of data and constant real-time AI learning — an area that 5G clearly excels.
  • Augmented reality offers great potential for factory field engineers conducting preventative maintenance. Again, AR relies on large data models accessed via a mobile device, as well as streaming of high-resolution video. Without hyperfast 5G, a field engineer could lose hours of productivity in downloading the right AR model, or require multiple technicians to be brought onsite to address an issue which could have been resolved remotely.
When we look more broadly at the challenge of bringing 5G-connected IoT devices to scale, it’s apparent that innovators and creators need a secure and scalable platform on which to build and deploy these kinds of industry use cases. In our view, that platform must be one that is based on open standards to enable interoperability across devices and systems, so customers can “build once, and run anywhere.”

As part of Samsung and IBM’s collaboration around 5G and Edge, Samsung is joining the ecosystem around IBM’s Edge Application Manager, which runs on open source technology from Red Hat.

Samsung’s core goal has always been enabling customers — whether consumers, industry or government — to achieve a whole new level of productivity, intelligence and connectivity. Much of the initial conversation on 5G has been around broader consumer connectivity and download speed. While the consumer applications are exciting, we see enterprises and governments taking the lead today.

There are signs that private 5G is about to take off. Auto manufacturers are securing 5G spectrum to implement private networks in their factories. Governments are exploring 5G for large facilities, including bases, ports and even on large vessels. Innovative application developers are creating new use cases in entertainment, education and healthcare.

In our view, whether it’s for the consumer or enterprise, the value of 5G connectivity is to enable “experience innovation.” It’s much more than devices and features, but the integration of technology to change the way we live and work. Much is written about Samsung’s end-to-end 5G capabilities from networking equipment to semiconductors and enabled mobile devices. No doubt that is a strength, but equally important is our focus on partnerships with industry peers like IBM and collaboration with our customers to bring these new experiences to life.

Samsung also have a few videos explaining "Shaping the Future of Industry 4.0 with 5G Manufacturing" that are embedded below.



Related Posts:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Laser Inter-Satellite Links (LISLs) in a Starlink Constellation

When we first talked about Starlink back in 2019 , we saw in the video that the concept involved laser communication to communicate between the satellites. While the initially launched satellites did not have the laser communication mechanism built in, it looks like they are being added to the newer ones.  A report from Fast Company in late 2021 said: One of the next big upgrades in telecom will involve satellites firing lasers at each other—to beam data, not blow stuff up. The upside of replacing traditional radio-frequency communication with lasers, that encode data as pulses of light, can be much like that of deploying fiber-optic cable for terrestrial broadband: much faster speeds and much lower latency. “Laser links in orbit can reduce long-distance latency by as much as 50%, due to higher speed of light in vacuum & shorter path than undersea fiber,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in July about the upgrade now beginning for that firm’s Starlink satellite constellation. The

IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability (UHR), a.k.a. Wi-Fi 8

Back in 2020 we looked at the introductory post of Wi-Fi 7 which was followed up by a more detailed post in Feb 2022. We are now following on with an introductory post on the next generation Wi-Fi.  A new paper on arXiv explores the journey towards IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability (UHR), the amendment that will form the basis of Wi-Fi 8. Quoting selected items from the paper  below: After providing an overview of the nearly completed Wi-Fi 7 standard, we present new use cases calling for further Wi-Fi evolution. We also outline current standardization, certification, and spectrum allocation activities, sharing updates from the newly formed UHR Study Group. We then introduce the disruptive new features envisioned for Wi-Fi 8 and discuss the associated research challenges. Among those, we focus on access point coordination and demonstrate that it could build upon 802.11be multi-link operation to make Ultra High Reliability a reality in Wi-Fi 8. The IEEE 802.11bn UHR: Whose Study Gro

CSI-RS vs SRS Beamforming

In an issue of Signals Flash by Signals Research Group (SRG), they talked about 2 different types of MIMO. Quoting from their journal, "CSI-RS versus SRS. Those operators that have tested or made token use of MU-MIMO leverage a flavor of MU-MIMO that is based on CSI-RS. The MU-MIMO network we tested was based on SRS, which makes it far more likely to observe sixteen spatial layers (versus eight)." I reached out to Emil Björnson, Visiting Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Associate Professor at Linköping University to see if he has explained this in any of his videos. Here is what he said: " I'm not talking about 3GPP terminology in any of my videos. But you can listen to the slides that starts around 12:40 in this video (embedded below) . If you are looking for CSI-RS vs SRS based MU-MIMO, then jump to around 12:40 in this video where you can see CSI-RS being referred to as "grid of beams" and SRS is similar to the other option, which is t