Nokia‘s 5G ‘factory of the future’ in Oulu, Finland has been selected by McKinsey and the World Economic Forum as an Advanced 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) Lighthouse, reflecting leadership and proven success in adopting and implementing 4IR technologies at scale.
Designed to showcase Industry 4.0 concepts for the manufacturing of Nokia 4G and 5G base stations, the Oulu factory uses Nokia’s private (4.9G/LTE) wireless networks for connectivity for all assets within and outside the factory, IoT analytics running on Edge cloud, and a real-time digital twin of operations data.
The factory, which produces 1,000 4G and 5G base stations per day, generated significant annual improvements, including more than 30 percent productivity gains, 50 percent savings in time of product delivery to market, and an annual cost savings of millions of euros.
The Lighthouse program, conducted in collaboration with McKinsey, includes select Lighthouse factories that are transforming work to make it safer, less repetitive, diversified and productive.
Nokia was selected as a Lighthouse by an expert panel based on its implementation of 4IR technologies that gave a financial and operational impact in the Oulu factory.
As part of the Global Lighthouse Network, Nokia will collaborate with other world leaders to share knowledge and best practices to help enterprises and manufacturers adopt the technologies of the future, and overcome key challenges enterprises face during their digital transformation journeys.
Kathrin Buvac, President of Nokia Enterprise and Chief Strategy Officer, said: “For our Oulu 5G facility, we created a ‘factory of the future’ environment leveraging private wireless networks for reliable and secure in-factory connectivity, edge cloud and IoT analytics.”
The factory of the future illustrates how facilities can reap the benefits of increased productivity, agility, product quality, and product lead time for their businesses, as achieved in Oulu.
Demonstrated use cases in Oulu pre-production factory include:
- Virtualisation of new product introduction (NPI)
- Flexible robotics to ensure high-productivity and agility for continuous new ramp-ups
- 4.9G/LTE Private wireless network to speed up NPI line re-layout
- Cloud-based digital data control, enabling real-time process management
- No-touch internal logistics automation via connected mobile robots
Heikki Romppainen, Head of Oulu Factory, Nokia, said: “For factory employees, the automation of our Oulu manufacturing environment increases flexibility and adaptability.
“The ‘conscious factory’ has evolved the working ecosystem – increasing motivation and the well-being of employees by automating the traditionally repetitive tasks, making work more diversified and productive.”
