How can 5G impact Industry 4.0?

  • My friend: Hi Ibrahim, I have a question for you.

    • Me: You’re welcome, please tell me.
  • My friend: I was reading about the impact of 5G on the industry and found the term Industry 4.0, so what does it mean?

    • Me: Actually, Industry 4.0 refers to what is called the 4th industrial revolution and as you can guess, as we have the number four, so we have three industrial revolutions previously. The story begins with Industry 1.0 where we used the steam power, then Industry 2.0 where we used machines powered by electrical energy, thereafter Industry 3.0 appeared where partial automation is introduced using simple computers and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), and lastly Industry 4.0 came with complete automation and smart factories appeared as we are using different technologies such as 5G, Cloud, AI/ML, IIoT, Big Data, Digital Twin, etc.
  • My friend: But how can 5G affect the industry 4.0 and the whole manufacturing process?

    • Me: 5G has unique features that can benefit the manufacturing companies such as enhanced mobile broadband and high capacity, low latency communications allowing for real-time responses and data transmissions, massive connectivity making it possible to offer a tremendous number of connections, increased transaction speeds to support AR, VR and IoT-related applications, reliable and stable communication network, also provides private networks supporting mobility for big factories unlike WI-FI technology.
  • My friend: So, which industries can benefit from 5G?

    • Me: Many industries can benefit from 5G such as manufacturing, energy and utilities, agriculture, media and entertainment, retail, transportation, AR/VR, and healthcare. Each industry will have its own requirements which 5G can provide as 5G can support different use cases with variety of evolving features that are appearing in different 5G releases, please check the below figure.
  • My friend: Thank you so much. You made it very clear.

    • Me: You are most welcome.

LinkedIn: Ibrahim Sayed, PMP on LinkedIn: #5g #5gnr #5gtechnology #openran #oran | 23 comments