At an Industry 4.0 showcase at the MxD Institute, Betacom, Google Cloud and Ingram Micro discussed the importance of collaboration

Last week, RCR Wireless News attended an Industry 4.0 showcase at the Factory Floor Lab in the Digital Manufacturing (MxD) Institute in Chicago, where private network specialist Betacom, cloud provider Google Cloud and IT distributor Ingram Micro were on site to discuss how their partnership brought the demonstration to life.

The new Industry 4.0 exhibition space at MxD is intended to “redefine efficiency, productivity and competitiveness in manufacturing and supply chain industries,” the trio said. The Industry 4.0 use cases on display combine private 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud technology, rendered as a collaborative and interactive exhibit, according to the group.

The showcase involves “smart automation and machine vision to predictive analytics and real-time inventory tracking,” and touches on use cases for smart manufacturing, digital workforce, resilient supply chains and safety and security.

Specifically, in a statement Betacom described the three showcases as follows: The first shows how modish data analytics and machine vision technologies, in particular connecting robots on private 5G, can “improve the efficiency, output quality, and uptime of modern production lines;” the second is about how augmented and virtual reality technologies can “streamline worker tasks, automate visual inspection, and enable new levels of remote collaboration on and off the factory floor;” and the third shows how cloud-based data analytics can help manufacturers “understand supply chain risks to improve demand planning and optimize execution.”

During a panel session at the Chicago event, Betacom’s CEO Johan Bjorklund highlighted the importance of collaboration, commenting that when it comes to Industry 4.0, “no one can go in alone.”

He continued: “Nobody is excited about 5G itself… but when you think about the things it can enable, then it becomes really exciting.” A robust, reliable wireless solution, he continued, introduces so many other opportunities that would otherwise not be possible. “In the background of all of this, we need a cloud solution [and] AI,” Bjorklund added.

And, of course, this is where Google Cloud enters the scene. “We don’t do 5G,” confirmed Fabien Duboeuf, Google’s Cloud’s manufacturing industry manager. Instead, Google is focused on bringing AI to customers and help them meet the requirements of their business by merging 5G with AI to bring a new level of automation. “It’s not about us and our solutions; it’s about can we meet you where you are. So, if you want to work at the edge, you can work at the edge. We don’t want you to worry about the technology,” he continued.

The third panelist, Karl Connolly, chief technologist at Ingram Micro, shared that his company brings to the table the vertical expertise it has garnered through its various enterprise partnerships. However, most of these partners, he continued, have no idea how to “even spell 5G, never mind how to implement it.” But the company found Betacom to be “the perfect accoutrement” in that the solutions provider can come in, assess the organization’s requirements and then design, build, manage, monitor and secure a 5G network for them. “This solution is very valuable in the sense that it can be consumed as a CAPEX; and now increasingly important for these customers is they want everything as an OPEX, so it naturally fits into the managed services catalogue of these partners,” Connolly explained. “It’s how they want to consume technology.”

While Betacom provides the network for Ingram’s industry partners, Google Cloud, he said, provides the analytics, cloud capabilities, infrastructure and services. “This is exactly what our partners need,” he said, adding that collaboration is what drives the Industry 4.0 outcomes that manufacturing and industry organizations are seeking. “At the end of the day, we’re not going to talk technology; we’re going to talk problems, we’re going to talk solutions, and then we’ll talk technology. But not the other way around,” he added.

A previously released statement about the showcase drove this point home, declaring: “By bringing together diverse technologies and device manufacturers… [we] aim to accelerate manufacturers’ automation and digitalization initiatives by demonstrating complete solutions that are available today.”

While on site, RCR Wireless News was able to see some of these use cases in person, which included using AI to assess if workers are wearing the appropriate safety equipment, such as hard hats and goggles, and using generative AI to drastically reduce administrative or operational tasks like searching an organization’s entire database for all of their suppliers who, for instance, use renewable energy at their facilities.