A number of key players from the telecoms, automation and manufacturing sectors have banded together to create a new alliance that aims to promote adoption of 5G in industrial production and to design it for industrial capability from the outset.
The 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation (5G-ACIA), which was formed at the ZVEI in early April, brings together 26 leading companies including Ericsson, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Bosch, Huawei, Infineon, Intel, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Siemens, Vodafone, and Yokogawa.
The 5G-ACIA is contributing to the standardization and regulation of 5G technologies. At the same time, the alliance is working to identify and analyze possible use cases and the associated requirements from the perspective of the industrial domain.
Dr. Andreas Müller, chairman of 5G-ACIA, said the key objective of 5G-ACIA is to ensure the best possible applicability of 5G technology and 5G networks for connected industries, in particular the manufacturing and process industries.
The alliance brings together important players in the fields of IoT and smart factories for the first time and will make it possible to align 5G with the needs of industries worldwide, Muller said in a statement.
“5G will become the central nervous system of the Factory of the Future and will have a disruptive impact on industrial production,” he said. “There are many advantages to 5G, including a very powerful wireless networking technology that is suitable even for critical industrial applications.”