How Private 5G Networks Can Optimise Vehicle Manufacturing

In an intensely competitive economy, factories can’t afford any downtime. That makes ultra-reliable systems a must in manufacturing.

Deployment of a new private 5G network in a Ford Motor Company plant in Dunton, Essex, UK, points to how 5G can be sufficiently reliable to support crucial production and maintenance processes. Using connectivity supplied by Vodafone and co-funding from the UK government, the project ran over two years starting 2020. It had two physical test beds with one located at Ford’s e-drive pilot manufacturing facility in Essex, UK and another at TWI’s Research Institute in Cambridge, UK, both covered by a single MPN.

As part of the solution, a private 5G network is used to remotely control machines and monitor changing machine configurations. The MPN enables Ford to capture data from sensors installed throughout its electric vehicle factory in Essex. The 5G connected sensors were initially used for real-time monitoring and control of laser welding for hairpin joining in electric vehicles (EVs) and battery-bus-bar joining. Using the 5G network, Ford creates digital twins of its processes, then the factory team of on-site engineers and remote experts at The Welding Institute (TWI) in Cambridge collaborate to monitor the welding process. The process includes checking 192 welds per part at least 3 times per cycle and each time the machine processes data within milliseconds. To do that, TWI needs access to “many gigabytes of information,” notes Chris Allen, Senior Laser Welding Engineer, TWI. “5G enables those kinds of large volumes of data to be moved around with greater ease.”

This helps the firm in monitoring the complete production process and making automatic adjustments in response to changes in input materials, environmental conditions, and other factors. To optimise the vehicle manufacturing process, the laser welding machines must capture large amounts of data generated by the machine. “As manufacturing the motor and battery of an electric vehicle requires around 1,000 welds, the welding process can generate up to 500,000 pieces of data per minute.” explains Chris White, Ford’s 5GEM project lead. “The welding machines generate very high amounts of heat to fuse pieces of copper together and therefore make a perfect circuit. As we do that, we collect data to make sure that we know your car is perfect and won’t have any issues. That data is incredibly important to us and that’s why 5G is critical going forward.”

“Project partner ATS Global is capitalising on the speed of the 5G network to deliver a hybrid cloud directly to the shopfloor. The platform allows the consortium partners to deploy AI at the network edge, enabling robotic process automation to automatically carry out, repeat and improve processes.” says White. At the same time, high speed, reliable, connectivity enables Ford’s equipment suppliers to use AR and VR headsets to provide the automaker with remote support and assist with testing new configurations.

The private 5G network, which has its own 5G core, uses mid-range 1GHz – 6GHz spectrum provided by Vodafone, gives Ford control over provisioning and administration processes, such as activating/deactivating SIM cards. The technology is ideal for providing connectivity in manufacturing facilities, which previously would have been supported by ‘miles’ of physical cabling. “Connecting today’s shop floor requires significant time and investment,” concludes White. “Present technology can be the limiting factor in reconfiguring and deploying next-gen manufacturing systems. 5G presents the opportunity to transform the speed of launch and flexibility of present manufacturing facilities, moving us towards tomorrow’s plants connected to remote expert support and artificial intelligence.”

As part of their next steps, Ford will focus on bringing together an ecosystem to support the deployment of private 5G networks in their other manufacturing facilities. The firm is in conversation with Vodafone to incorporate support for the deployment of private networks 5G in Spanish, South African and German facilities. “We have a non-standalone network, and of course standalone networks are now becoming available with advantages such as lower end-to-end latency – this loops back to the types of sensors and devices that will work in the facility. From a global perspective there are differences in how spectrum is going to be managed, and this will drive complexity for Ford if we want a global solution.” adds White.

In such cases, Ford may choose to use 5G mm Wave, which can support very fast throughput over short distances.

Another potentially interesting feature for manufacturing is ranging – the use of 5G signals to create a dense three-dimensional map of what is happening in a specific location. This feature could be used to create so-called digital twins of a plant or factory or to recreate the facility in the Metaverse. These solutions could be used to monitor the performance of the plant and detect any anomalies, such as a security breach, as well as running “what if” simulations.