In the era of digital economy, the production model, operation model and business model of enterprises are changing. Among the intertwined forces driving industrial digital transformation, the constantly evolving 5G new generation of information and communication technology, with its “natural” characteristics such as large bandwidth, low delay, high reliability, and wide coverage, provides a powerful infrastructure for the digitalization, networking, and intelligent transformation of the industrial field, and becomes a powerful engine to alleviate the pain points of traditional manufacturing.

At the just-concluded China International Industry Fair, Schneider Electric, together with China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and China United Network Communications Group Co., LTD., jointly released the “5G+PLC Deep Integration Solution” white paper (hereinafter referred to as the “White paper”), describing the application of 5G+PLC in discrete manufacturing industry. Involving the 5G network planning, deployment, operation and maintenance and performance requirements in the full life cycle of production line design to operation and maintenance, and supplemented by detailed application, it demonstrates the profound changes brought by 5G to the manufacturing production mode “with line and surface”, so as to promote the future industrial field reform.

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In the preface to the white paper, Yu Xiaohui, president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, pointed out that PLC, as the core controller of industrial automation, and the integration of 5G technology, has brought about changes in function, form and structure, and can achieve more intelligent, more reliable and safer industrial control, which has been highly concerned by all parties. Its practice is gradually deepening and expanding from the application of peripheral auxiliary links such as logistics control to the application of core links such as production control.

However, in order to truly play the value of 5G technology and make it a driving force for the high-quality development of the real industry, it is urgent to integrate with the real economy and apply innovation, and it needs to deeply integrate with the operational technology (OT) in the industrial field and integrate with the industrial automation system.

5G native capabilities add momentum to changes in the field of industrial control

With the increasing demand for industrial flexible production, the upgrading of the industrial field itself has gradually accelerated, and discrete manufacturing, as a typical representative of the manufacturing industry, has undergone the baptism of industrial digitalization, and continues to move toward “customized flexible production line”, “OT/IT network closely combined”, and “new integrated industrial automation system” : First of all, the segmented process brings the possibility of customized production according to different needs in the production process, and the demand for industrial flexible production is further increased; Secondly, lean production makes IT more necessary for discrete manufacturing enterprises to realize the circulation and sharing of on-site production factor data to enterprise management data through the integration network of OT and IT. Finally, the complex traditional networking structure is developing towards the three-layer end-to-end cloud architecture in the era of Industry 4.0, and the collaborative deployment of MES, SCADA, and ERP on edge computing nodes or industrial clouds has become an industry trend.