The exchange of data plays an important role in networked Industry 4.0. The 5G mobile communications standard meets the corresponding requirements for response times of machines or systems, transferable data volumes and high-precision localization of objects in production.
So far, however, the individual benefits of 5G applications are not well enough known, especially among small and medium-sized companies. This is the conclusion of an impulse paper by the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), which was produced under the leadership of scientists from KIT.
"The benefits of 5G are not sufficiently transparent, meaning that industrial companies are not in a position to develop corresponding use cases and evaluate them financially. The aim must therefore be to bring 5G providers and industrial application domains together in order to leverage this enormous potential," explains Professor Jürgen Fleischer, Head of the wbk Institute for Production Technology at KIT and co-editor of the paper. The aim is to promote the broad-based introduction and dissemination of 5G in industry and to maintain Germany's leading role in the field of Industry 4.0. In this respect, 5G offers advantages for almost all sectors of the economy. The project team from KIT, the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Technical University of Kaiserslautern as well as acatech are calling for application examples together with companies in order to demonstrate the concrete benefits and solutions for possible hurdles in a practical manner.
