INDUSTRY 4.0 ACCELERATED!

Industry 4.0 is here now and has accelerated due to the pandemic. Today, companies are laying the foundation for connectivity and a unified IT/OT digital platform. Now, there are newer technologies emerging, besides 4G/5G, to help Industry 4.0 work across demanding environments

- Pradeep Chakraborty

One such technology is Wirepas. It is said to be world’s first and only non-cellular 5G connectivity technology for enterprise IoT (Internet of Things)—Wirepas Private 5G. you can connect millions of devices even in the toughest, most demanding environments. It allows coverage anywhere, with a free global dedicated spectrum at 1.9GHz. This, at the fraction of the cost of cellular.

Wirepas partner case was when the design department of a car manufacturer needed to locate cars or component prototypes in a hurry. Stuck with an end-of-life barcode-based inventory system, this was the problem facing one world-leading German automotive brand. It used Wirepas to solve the problem.

The Industry IoT Consortium (IIC) has a mission to deliver transformative business value to the industry, organizations, and society by accelerating adoption of a trustworthy IoTs.

Stephen Mellor, CTO, IIC, said that you can’t necessarily have a unified IT/OT platform! The average age of an industrial installation is 19 years. Some installations don’t even use 2G, let alone 5G! Moreover, they often have a plethora of domain-specific connectivity technologies, tightly integrated and optimized to solve domain-specific connectivity needs. The IIoT (Industrial IoT) systems typically include the integration of brownfield technologies to preserve legacy investments, and greenfield technologies to spur innovation.

He added: “We have to define a small set of connectivity core standards. Domain-specific connectivity technologies then need a gateway to just one of the connectivity core standards, to participate in an information exchange with the rest of the IIoT ecosystem.”

MULTIPLE FRAMEWORKS