Cooperation with Ericsson and Telefónica
Car manufacturer Mercedes makes its plant in Sindelfingen fit for industry 4.0 and equips production with the latest 5G standard. For the implementation, the car manufacturer cooperates with Telefónica Germany and the network supplier Ericsson.
The 5G technology will initially be used in a 20,000 square meter section of Factory 56 in the production area. The plant is one of the top 3 car factories in Germany. Here, the E- and S-class models come off the assembly line.
Mercedes gets its own campus network
Mercedes wants to use the 5G network to make production more intelligent, more flexible and more efficient. For example, production data can be networked or products can be located on the assembly line. With the new mobile communications standard, large amounts of data can be processed in the shortest possible time.
“This opens up completely new opportunities for production,” believes Jörg Burzer. He is responsible for production and supply chain in the automotive division of the Stuttgart group.
For this purpose, Telefónica is setting up an independent campus network and will support Mercedes Benz until the network is handed over. Production equipment has already begun.
Volkswagen Group wants to follow
Besides Mercedes, the competitor Volkswagen is also working on the introduction of 5G networks. Audi is already in a pilot phase at a plant in Ingolstadt, and Porsche also plans to test it soon.
In addition to the advantages in production, industry experts hope that the technology will enable autonomous cars to communicate with each other and process information, for example about traffic.
Source: www.kloepfel-engineering.com