Spanish telco Telefonica Tech has teamed up with Engineering company Grupo Alava to produce a predictive maintenance solution based on IoT, 5G and machine learning installations.

Predictive maintenance involves using sensors dotted around factories or industrial settings, high speed communications infrastructure, and powerful analytical software to track large amounts of equipment – whether that’s rotary engines, reciprocating machinery, electrical transformers, or even just conveyor belts.

The resulting data pool is analysed to draw out trends from the production line, and the idea is you can spot where there are possible faults or defects in machinery and take measures pre-emptively before the workflow is heavily disrupted.

The platform developed by Telefonica Tech and Grupo Alava also uses machine learning models designed to improve the efficiency of machinery, and a demo set up is currently on show at the Telefonica District Innovation Centre in Madrid.

“The agreement with Grupo Alava will allow us to extend and massify our predictive maintenance capabilities and help all companies in the industrial sector to avoid long downtime and reduce costs thanks to 5G, IoT, Edge Computing and Big Data technologies,” said Andrés Escribano, Director of New Business and Industry 4.0 at Telefónica Tech. “Digital transformation plays a key role in the development of a more sustainable and resilient industrial activity”.

Yago Sanchez, Director of Alliances at Grupo Álava, added: “the combination of 5G technologies and predictive technology allows different industries to take a giant step forward in the digitisation of industrial processes. We understand that this union offers guarantees to our current and future customers to improve their competitiveness in the international market, thanks to the adoption of process digitalisation solutions, predictive maintenance of assets, digital twins, improvement of end product quality and a large number of other contributions that we can make to their business”.

The manufacturing sector, or at least the high end or ‘advanced’ side of it is widely adopting smart factory type platforms like these. Ultimately they are there to increase productivity and profit, but they are often celebrated as the thing that will provide a boom to the sector in places like the UK, where domestic manufacturing started losing significance 40 years ago as places like China became worldwide manufacturing powerhouses.

But as the pandemic revealed some weaknesses in global supply chains, there has been more talk about ’onshoring’ – or a building more things locally – all of which is quite heavily linked with the upgrades the sector believes AI, 5G IoT and edge computing can bring to its factories.