5G Ushers in New Era for Manufacturing

In Jingzhou, Hubei Province, Midea has opened a new washing machine factory that uses 5G to deliver a fully interconnected manufacturing process. Built by China Mobile and Huawei, the factory-wide 5G network enables end-to-end digitisation, advanced logistics, automated robotics, real-time production line monitoring and quality checks using artificial intelligence.

At the new factory, a washing machine comes off the production line every 15 seconds, which is three seconds faster than the second fastest factory in the industry, according to Midea. Compared with a traditional washing machine factory in the Midea Group, output has been doubled, the inventory has been reduced by 50%, and the production cost per product has been cut by 30%. Midea says it has achieved quality improvements, while making the factory safer and more sustainable.

Midea uses 5G's low latency and multi-access edge computing to collect data on the factory’s processes, which is analysed by the manufacturing execution system. That analysis can be used to make predictions and subsequently optimise the entire manufacturing process. Controlled in the cloud, 5G-connected robots and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) can easily be redeployed and reconfigured, thereby making the production lines more flexible, and helping to streamline the supply, production, distribution, warehousing and shipment processes across the plant. Midea’s new factory also uses 5G-connected sensors, instruments and cameras to help it manage energy consumption, track environmental factors, increase safety and maintain site security.

When it went live in August 2022, Midea’s new factory had 2,500 5G connections and more than 1,000 automated machines (in the production and logistic lines). “Each production phase is seamlessly connected through 5G terminals with faster automated machine operations that streamline the complex workshop pipelines,” says [wang Liang] of Midea. “It is a benchmark not only in Midea Group, but also in the home appliance manufacturing industry.”

Midea’s holistic deployment of 5G marks a complete departure from the traditional approach to connecting a factory, in which a large number of fibre-optic network cables and Wi-Fi routers are installed, resulting in high costs, long deployment periods, and inflexible infrastructure that is difficult to upgrade or expand. Noting that 5G is more reliable than Wi-Fi, Midea says its AGVs and other connected equipment are less likely to be impacted by unstable signals.

The decision to build 5G into the factory from the start has also saved time and money. China Mobile estimates this approach reduced the whole construction period by at least 60 days. “Traditionally, communication networks are not rolled out until a factory and production lines are completed, which can be a lengthy process, and hence does not meet client expectations,” says [Zhang Fei] of China Mobile. “China Mobile wanted to find a faster way to accomplish this.”

China Mobile used a combination of macro sites, pole sites and Huawei’s LampSite solution to build an indoor and outdoor massive MIMO 5G network, which operates in the 2.6 GHz and 4.9 GHz bands. Huawei says the end-to-end reliability of the 5G network, which has a total uplink capacity of 7 Gbps, is over 99.99%, thanks to the redundancy built into its multi-level design. The network also delivers 1Gbps uplink capacity per square kilometre in dense areas, Huawei adds. The distributed massive MIMO technology uses frequency spatial multiplexing and uplink multi-layer transmission to increase capacity. China Mobile and Huawei have also developed algorithms to enhance pairing and reduce interference between terminals and base stations, to further boost uplink capacity by 20%.

The high capacity 5G uplink enables Midea to capture HD images in real-time from multiple angles. Analysed by AI algorithms, these images have improved the accuracy of the quality control system by 10%.

Before building the network, China Mobile and Huawei ran 3D modelling simulations in the cloud drawing on data from high-precision lasers to map out the real-world environment. “The modelling precision rate reaches 99% and the simulation matching degree rate exceeds 90%, ensuring the deterministic rate for each access terminal,” says [Eric Bao] of Huawei. This precision modelling helped to ensure the 5G network would meet Midea’s performance requirements.

This expansion will require some 5G terminals to be reallocated, as well as changes to the network capacity requirements in the workshop. Distributed massive MIMO technology makes these adjustments easier. “There is no need to move the modules, as the technology can dynamically match the changes of the production line, by providing a deterministic rate and capacity,” says Eric Bao of Huawei. “Distributed massive MIMO cells can also be split to form an extremely-large distributed massive MIMO cell easily to achieve 3Gbps uplink capacity per 10,000m², with 100MHz bandwidth spectrum.”

A distributed massive MIMO solution can be used to define a consistent capacity per unit area of the factory, which is more intuitive for an industrial customer purchasing network capability, than network capacity defined by cell. This feature makes wireless network planning as simple and flexible as building blocks, according to Huawei. “To match up with the future requirements for vertical industries, the solution can be easily upgraded to support mmWave transmission, high-precision positioning, advanced intelligent sensing, etc.” adds Eric Bao of Huawei.

As most manufacturing sectors have similar service requirements, Huawei anticipates that the solution deployed by Midea can be replicated on a large scale across the industry. With more and more fully-connected factories, China (and the rest of the world) could take one step closer to carbon neutrality and a more sustainable future.