Smart Manufacturing Multi-Site Testbed with 5G and Beyond Connectivity

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is forming the manufacturing industry towards more agile and networked operations enriched by exploitation of new technology. Manufacturing is also one of the key verticals defined by the 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) aimed at digital transformation in industrial communication. In this paper, we will present the current status of the VTT’s (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd) Industry X Smart Manufacturing Testbed, which enables Finnish industrial companies to test and experiment new production methods and technologies in an industrial-like environment. The testbed utilizes technologies varying from robotics to 5G and beyond connectivity, and from international data spaces (IDS) to extended forms of reality (AR, VR, MR) and digital twins. The testbed is built in a hierarchical manner. Inter-connected factory level testbeds comprise of factory process level processes that are grouped into use case families. These processes include several proofs of concept demonstrators, which utilize different technologies available in the testbed. In this paper, three recent proof-of-cencepts (PoC) are briefly presented to illustrate the next-generation manufacturing possibilities using the latest communication technologies available.