5G Trials in Manufacturing Continue Apace in the West Midlands, England

AE Aerospace manufactures precision components for customers in the aerospace, marine, and defense sectors. Customers include Rolls Royce, Raytheon, and Airbus at its 16,500-square-foot factory in Birmingham. AE Aerospace is collaborating with the West Midlands 5G (WM5G)—created by the West Midlands Combined Authority; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; and the Worcestershire 5G (W5G) consortium. This involves trialing a private 5G network from mobile network operator BT in WM5G’s manufacturing test-bed. The purpose of the trial is to test how a 5G network can support the aerospace firm’s location tracking, quality assurance, and servitization activities.

Up to now, 5G trials have involved some of the largest manufacturers in the world, such as Boeing (see, e.g., IN-5854) or Worcester Bosch (IN-5726). In fact, nine of the top 10 manufacturers by revenue are trialing a mobile private network. With approximately US$6.77 million in 2019 revenue and 70 employees, AE Aerospace demonstrates that smaller manufacturers are exploring the role and the potential of 5G to support their operations.

AE Aerospace’s 5G trial will encompass three different areas.

• Mobile Asset Location and Calibration Tracking: Like other manufacturers, AE Aerospace needs to assure customers that the parts produced have been machined and measured to the exact specifications of engineering design. Currently this is a manual process that involves measuring surfaces, holes, and screw threads with gauges. The 5G network will enable the company to connect all the gauges, to monitor their status, and more importantly, to pinpoint any issues in real time, accelerating the speed and accuracy of the assurance process.
• Product Quality Assurance: The 5G network will enable AE Aerospace to collect ultra-high-definition images of components in real time to ensure that quality standards are being met by creating a closed-loop quality control process. Identifying defects means that AE Aerospace can identify machining issues and adjust machines to reduce the need to rework or replace components.
• Machine Time Servitization: The 5G network will collect data from the shopfloor via Internet of things machine sensors and provide the company with an understanding of production flows and machine time utilization. AE Aerospace plans to sell machine time to its clients.

In the first two areas, the 5G network will provide operational savings while the servitization trial potentially provides a new revenue source. A 5G network is better suited than alternatives such as Wi-Fi when considering the bandwidth required for monitoring the gauges in real time and collecting ultra-high-definition images.

Last year (see IN-5854), ABI Research concluded that 5G networks were still waiting to solve essential manufacturing problems and lacked maturity to enable these kinds of trials to take place Many use cases for a 5G network have concerned predictive maintenance and overall equipment effectiveness, acting as an insurance against unforeseen downtime. Having a 5G network underpinning the effort to automate quality assurance programs will certainly generate interest from manufacturers for the following reasons.

• The inspection technologies have proven to be quicker and more accurate than the human eye
• They can be embedded earlier into the workflow in real time
• They can be embedded throughout the production process rather than down the line where the cost of scrap and rework is considerably higher.

Utilizing a 5G network to support asset tracking and quality assurance enables manufacturers to guarantee a better quality of service and to differentiate themselves. The servitization trial shows that a 5G network can help manufacturers whose machinery is often idle to maximize asset utilization and to enable new business models in order to generate new revenue streams and to align the network with preferred business outcomes.

The examples of Worcester Bosch and AE Aerospace demonstrate that it takes more than UK government funding initiatives to encourage manufacturers to adopt new technologies. Adoption accelerates when there is collaboration among regional consortia, local manufacturers, and technology providers. The challenge currently is not to garner interest and funding but to scale successful initiatives with manufacturers, regardless of sector, in order to show the benefit that a 5G network could deliver for their own facilities. The onus is on WM5G and W5G to replicate these projects in many different manufacturing settings and to foster collaboration among manufacturers both large and small.

So far 5G private wireless trials on the shop floor have been the domain of giant manufacturers such as Ford, GM, Toyota, and VW. There are many benefits of digital transformation initiatives that may yet be realized or accelerated with the help of 5G, and these benefits are not exclusive to large manufacturers. AE Aerospace is just one example of a smaller organization endeavoring to justify the investment. All else being equal, AE Aerospace will show that tying investments to business challenges and revenue opportunities will mean that 5G networks will be deployed at smaller sites, too.