Industrial market challenges and solutions

A new age of visibility

With the large-scale deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices throughout industrial sites, the performance of the numerous constituent elements can be continuously monitored to a high degree of granularity. This will ensure that everything is running correctly and flag any issues to be addressed so that it does not lead to inferior products, create additional wastage, or cause machinery to be damaged. This monitoring data can also be of value in preventing potentially catastrophic events occurring, where the lives of the workforce could otherwise be endangered. Any problem that might emerge can be identified at an earlier stage, before the situation has become too serious.

Closer cooperation between humans and robots

Robots and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are becoming more commonplace in warehouses and on factory floors. Though in the past robotic arms would be operating in heavily restricted areas, robots are now being expected to work alongside human staff - generally being referred to as collaborative robots (or cobots). This means that their movements need to be much better controlled through high precision motion sensors and the imaging data provided by on-board cameras. Higher accuracy location data is also required, being determined via UWB or GNSS.

Detailed modelling of industrial operations

The digital transformation now underway is set to enable predictive maintenance to be undertaken. Studying captured datasets will mean that component parts that need replacing can be pinpointed before they wear out or stop functioning. Consequently, unwanted disruption and costly downtime will be avoided. By taking the data derived from items of complex equipment, it is now possible to generate highly detailed virtual approximations of their original physical forms. Using such ‘digital twins’, the longer-term effects of different operational scenarios can be played out to check their validity - such as increasing the speed or the temperature levels that equipment is running at, using different raw materials. This can be done at a greatly accelerated rate, so that projected outcomes more than a decade ahead may be seen. As all this is happening in the virtual domain, rather than in the real world, there is no risk of the equipment being broken or workers being harmed.

Overcoming communication challenges

New factory installations will generally roll out multi-Gbit Ethernet networking infrastructure to support their data transmissions. However, a large proportion of existing industrial operations will have older machinery that utilises outdated fieldbus protocols or even proprietary protocols that are incompatible with modern communication standards. As it will usually represent too large an investment to dispose of all this machinery, alternative methods are needed. Legacy items can easily be upgraded by retrofitting them with wireless modules. These modules can be arranged in mesh, star, ring or tree topologies, as application requirements dictate.

LPWAN wireless solutions are being employed in a lot of industrial use cases. Though the advent of 5G mobile, due to the faster data rates and low latency capabilities it offers, seems likely to encourage the establishing of private networks at many industrial and logistics sites. It is of course, paramount that the data being carried over wireless networks, whichever protocol or standard is chosen, does not become compromised, with malicious third parties prevented from accessing it. Therefore stringent security mechanisms need to be put in place.

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