The First Network Slice Trial for Intelligent Manufacturing: How does the value of 5G reflect?

By Meng Xiaobin, Chief Engineer of Integrated Solution, ZTE Corporation

Recently, together with Zhejiang Branch of China Telecom and Zhejiang Bluetron, ZTE announced the successful commission of the first “5G Slicing + MEC + Intelligent Manufacturing” project in China, which will undoubtedly serve as a good example for the application of 5G in the manufacturing industry.

It seems that it is one of the areas that 5G has been exploring in the vertical industry this year. ZTE believes that this is the first project to apply 5G E2E network slicing technology to intelligent manufacturing scenarios in China, which has a unique significance for building 5G smart factories in various industries. To the telecom operators, it is also an important exploration targeting to the enterprise market.

5G implementation is the key issue

5G is not only the “popular star” in public, but also attracts the interests of users in various industries with its outstanding features of eMBB, URLLC and mMTC. How to introduce 5G to drive the business change and innovation, and make 5G a reality, are the common topics among telecommunication industry and vertical industries.

Therefore, the successful execution of this project is critical. The high-definition video streams for industrial production systems (such as Red Lion Cement feed inlet) is taken by BlueTron with its industrial cameras, and then transmitted to the industrial vision analysis system in real time via 5G network. The industrial vision analysis system, which is deployed on the MEC servers, conducts AI-based intelligent video analysis of the video streams. The abnormal in the production system, such as feed inlet congestion, can be automatically identified and alerted.

Network slicing is crucial in this project to ensure the large upstream bandwidth and high security isolation required by industrial vision scenarios. Vision analysis system is deployed on the MEC servers to provide nearby processing and ensure the low latency and high security. ZTE, Zhejiang Branch of China Telecom and BlueTron collaborated closely to provide a dedicated eMBB network slice and the MEC edge cloud platform for manufacturing enterprises. BlueTron’s cloud intelligent vision analysis system is loaded on the platform. In this project, not only the automatic monitoring and management of the production process are realized, but also the production data security is ensured since “data stays inside the factory” throughout the whole process.

The network supports multiple video streams uploading from various terminals at a speed of 20Mbps each and a delay around 20ms, which meet the current needs of industrial visual inspection in the feed inlet of Red Lion cement production line. This requirement for upstream rate is not very high and can be guaranteed preferentially through RAN resources scheduling supported by network slicing technology. With the further improvement of video resolution and bit rate of machine vision, as well as the increasing of monitoring point of industrial cameras in the future, the demand for 5G upstream bandwidth will be further increased. Independent frequency bands can be allocated in that stage and also the frame structure with higher up-ratio can be used to improve the utilization efficiency of RAN resources.

The video surveillance for production lines in traditional factories adopt wired connection solution, and a large number of cables are used, resulting in a complex internal structure of the factory, which cannot meet the needs of flexible production for future digital society. The adoption of 5G slicing solution makes it possible for wireless technology to replace wired, so that to easily build the flexible workshops and wireless factories, and promote intelligent manufacturing finally. That’s the meaning of this project.

Smart factories need 5G to do more

Currently, the project is mainly used for industrial vision detection, which is a common scenario in the intelligent manufacturing industry. In essence, it is the achievement of intelligent detection in industrial production environment through 5G network, by which the human visual is extended, empowered by the AI-based vision analysis system.

The current service flow of industrial vision inspection is still an open ring. In the future, it will be combined with the control flow to form a completely closed-loop automatic control system. 5G network will support seamless combination of eMBB service in upstream and URLLC service in downstream. Therefore, 5G low latency technology will play an important role in the future.

It is known that 5G eMBB network slicing technology is relatively mature and ready for commercial use. But the multi-dimensional charging of slices and business models need to be further explored in practice. The 5G URLLC slicing technology is expected to be commercially available by the year of 2021 after the accomplishment of relative standards in 2020.

Smart factories need 5G to do more. 5G technology will accelerate the transformation of intelligent manufacturing. “Internet of Things” of the workshops will be achieved by networking of the production equipment; production decisions are made based on the big data analysis with the production data visualization; the efficient and green manufacturing can be achieved when the production documents are paperless; the intelligent factory “neural” system can be created by the transparency in production process; and with the unmanned production site, the unmanned factory will be actually realized.

The 5G⁺ industrial internet can be applied in all the processes of the production, management and supply chains to help manufacturing enterprises in their transformation upgrading, reduce the cost, improve the enterprise informatization and competitiveness, evolving towards wireless, automated, intelligent, and flexible manufacturing.

For example, the 5G-based machine vision inspection, by the industrial cameras and edge computing gateway deployed in the production line, the video can be automatically processed, recognized and labeled, avoiding human error and mis-checking. All the units support on-demand, fast and flexibly wireless networking. This will greatly improve the qualification rate of the products. The scope of detectable applications in the equipment manufacturing industry will be expanded by more than 30% and the detection accuracy will be increased by 200%.

Digital transformation is just in time

On June 6, 2019, China’s MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) issued 5G licenses to four major Chinese telecom operators, which means that the 5G era is officially open in China. Unlike previous generations of wireless technology, 5G will not only focus on upgrading in the public market, but also enter the vertical industries and build infrastructures for the digital transformation of the verticals. Miao Wei, the Minister of MIIT recently spoke at a press conference of the State Administration that, 80% of the 5G application scenarios will be on the industrial internet in the future.

The China Information and Communications Research Institute previously released the report “5G Industrial Economy Contribution”, which predicted that the information consumption driven by 5G commercialization in China from 2020 to 2025, directly driving the total economic output to CNY10.6 trillion ($1.5 trillion), and indirectly pull of the total economic output to about CNY24.8 trillion ($3.5 trillion). 5G will directly create more than 3 million jobs in China.

The digital transformation of the industry is the trend. We are currently on the eve of large-scale digital upgrading of the industry. The digital technology innovation will improve productivity and work environments by automation and intelligence of the production process. 5G networks are indispensable during such intelligent changes in manufacturing and digital transformation in vertical industries.

Industry scenario differentiation is very large. New demand, new business, new models are continually emerging. Compared to the B2C market, B2B market has the basic characteristics of fragmentation and high barriers. Expanding to the B2B market is a new topic for operators. Operators need to work closely with leading enterprises and solution providers in various industries in order to understand the needs of the industrial scenarios and transform them into network slice templates and form the B2B business models which are replicable, promotable, and profitable. ZTE believes that 5G will expand the market share for operators in the tide of digital transformation, and achieve sustainable growth of the telecommunications industry.