LL1: Factories of the Future

Factory digitisation will be a pivotal goal for 2020 and Industry 4.0 initiatives have been driving the emergence of new manufacturing scenarios based on increased sensing, as well as the collaborative functions of a new generation of robots or ‘cobots’, with the ultimate goal of increasing the efficiency of factory production lines. An evolution towards data-driven ecosystems is progressively being seen by exploiting product lifecycle data from connected goods, whereby diverse data collection scenarios will be supported by energy efficient communication schemes and scalable data analytics. Through the use of Augmented Reality (AR), we see the rise of new remote services that facilitate effective knowledge sharing in the factory. Future communication solutions are expected to ensure seamless, real-time and secure connectivity between different globally distributed production sites and new actors in the value chain (e.g. suppliers, logistics). Innovative strategies and their design principles are gaining increasing acceptance and will influence present and future 5G requirements. The main use cases identified in the context of the Factories of the Future LL are as follows: 

Use Case 1.1: Time-critical process optimisation inside digital factories 
Use Case 1.2: Non-time-critical communication inside factories 
Use Case 1.3: Remotely controlling digital factories
Use Case 1.4: Connected goods
Use Case 1.5: Rapid deployment, auto/re-configuration and testing of new robots

Technological KPIs to be validated include target values on data rate, mobility, latency, density, reliability, positioning accuracy, coverage and autonomy.