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2020
Journal Article
Titel
Quantification of economic potential of 5G for latency critical applications in production
Abstract
A fourth industrial revolution has started with the objective of making the vision of highly efficient, connected and flexible manufacturing systems reality. Reliable communication systems being capable of handling several orders of magnitude the number of resources, diverse type of information and reaction times, will be the foundation of future manufacturing systems. The forthcoming 5G mobile communications standard appears to be an effective way to achieve a communication system for factories of the future. As wireless communication technology, 5G-Technology can substantially reduce installation and maintenance costs while allowing to easily connect mobile or inaccessible devices and simplify line layout. Providing low latencies, high data transmission rates and the possibility of operating many devices simultaneously in narrowly restricted radio cells, 5G meets the demands of future manufacturing systems and has great potential to accelerate the ongoing digital transformation. Especially the characteristics of low latency (1 ms or less) and thus the possibility of monitoring and controlling complex production processes in near real-time hold a significant potential of 5G for manufacturing. Despite these prospected advantages, benefits of integrating 5G in a production process can barely be quantified yet. Current studies show that 40% of enterprises cite poor measurability of economic benefits of 5G for their specific processes as key concern. However, it is highly important to estimate these benefits before investing in such an elementary technology. This paper describes an approach for the quantification of economic potential of 5G for latency-critical applications in production. The core element of this approach is a framework of quantification criteria for the economic profitability of 5G technology based on production process parameters. This is mainly achieved by considering the improvements in product quality and process efficiency that are caused by using 5G for the considered production processes. These improvements are then converted into economic benefits to allow a process specific budgeting of 5G before the investment. To demonstrate and validate the proposed concept, the presented approach is applied to a latency critical 5-axis milling process of a Blade-Integrated Disk (BLISK), a jet engine's compressor component.