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Initiative 5G-ACIA has kicked off: Jointly designing 5G for industrial use

The upcoming generation of mobile networks 5G is of great importance for industry.
The “5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation” (5G-ACIA), which was established at the ZVEI on 3rd April 2018, strives to successfully establish 5G in industrial production and to design it for industrial capability from the outset.

5G makes it possible to implement Industrie 4.0 even faster and to take it to the next level. This technology enables an unprecedented degree of flexibility, versatility and mobility in industrial production. There are many advantages to 5G, including a very powerful wireless networking technology that is suitable even for critical industrial applications.

5G-ACIA is actively contributing to the standardisation and regulation of 5G. At the same time, it identifies and analyses possible use cases and the associated requirements from the perspective of the industrial domain. “5G will become the central nervous system of the Factory of the Future and will have a disruptive impact on industrial production”, says Dr. Andreas Müller (Bosch), Chairman of 5G-ACIA. “For the first time, the 5G-ACIA brings together all the major players worldwide. This enables us to work in a concerted and targeted manner to ensure that the interests of the industry are taken into account accordingly.”

The initiative brings together representatives of the traditional automation and manufacturing industries as well as leading organisations from the ICT industry. The current 26 members include: Beckhoff, Bosch, Deutsche Telekom, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Endress+Hauser, Ericsson, Festo, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Harting, Hirschmann Automation & Control, Huawei, Infineon, Institute for Industrial Information Technology (inIT), Institute for Automation and Communication (ifak), Intel, Mitsubishi Electric, Nokia, NXP, Pepperl+Fuchs, Phoenix Contact, R3 – Reliable Realtime Radio Communications, Siemens, Trumpf, Vodafone, Weidmüller and Yokogawa.

In the white paper “5G for Connected Industries and Automation”, the initiative presents an initial overview of the topic and outlines its objectives.