Intel said it has joined forces with Telecom Italia (TIM) and JMA Wireless to build a smart factory for Exor International, an industrial PC and machine interfaces manufacturer, in the city of Verona in northern Italy. Based on the latest 5G systems from TIM and JMA, combined with a series of Intel products, including Atom processors, Xeon Scalable processors, FPGAs, Edge Controls and Edge Insights for industrial software, the factory uses 5G spectrum (sub 6GHz and 26GHz) to show what is possible with the latest networking, cloud and edge computing technologies in an agile and modular application environment.
Citing data indicating that the global smart manufacturing market is expected to reach around USD 506 billion by 2027 at a compound annual growth rate of 12.2 percent, the partners said manufacturers are evaluating ways to take advantage of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G to reduce maintenance and energy costs and improve workforce productivity.
Exor’s smart factory aims to demonstrate the operational benefits of digitalisation, including the ability to react to changes in orders and employee availability in real time as well as ensuring that everything planned for the week, – including supplies, components and documentation – is in order and ready for production. The technology will also provide real-time updates on order status and work-in-progress advancements, regardless of order size.
The smart factory will also include an on-premise 5G lab to demonstrate how manufacturers can build private networks and integrate with existing solutions to deliver business value. Specifically, the lab will explore 5G’s ability to improve communication in an extreme factory design setup, enable peer-to-peer communication through the use of industrial robots and impact edge computing cluster connectivity versus wired connections.
Exor will also pilot a visual quality inspection machine that uses Intel Movidius VPU and the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit to automatically flag defects, dust and scratches in near real time. The machine will also classify those defects before sending the information to factory workers for assessment.
