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While the general business outlook for the U.S. chemical and oil & gas industries remains positive in 2022, process manufacturers are facing greater periods of uncertainty and increasingly volatile demand for their products due to a number of external factors - economic (inflation), government (interest rates), global and supply chain issues (conflicts, COVID-19 pandemic).
This uncertainty could lead some companies to delay or pause their plans to invest in automating and digitizing existing plants, and other forward-thinking companies to accelerate their investments.
A 2022 survey of more than 150 process manufacturing managers and executives conducted by ABI Research and Nokia found that 24% of respondents have delayed or stopped their digitalization plans due to the pandemic, while more than 39% have accelerated their digitalization strategy over the past two years. Of those that accelerated their digitalization plans, the top two benefits identified were improved productivity and business continuity.
Top three operational challenges
According to the ABI Research/Nokia survey, the top three ranked operational challenges that process manufacturers face are:
- Meeting production schedules
- Maintaining quality levels
- Upgrading or automating existing equipment
These challenges should not be a surprise to plant managers. With demand fluctuations and constantly changing product mixes, meeting production schedules and maintaining quality are constant challenges. What might be somewhat surprising is that upgrading or automating existing equipment was ranked in the top three challenges, ahead of acquiring/maintaining qualified staff and staying within operating budget.
Choosing the right time to upgrade or automate existing plant equipment is certainly a challenge, and a decision that is often delayed due to competing business pressures. Yet, when asked to identify the top investment priorities for the next three years, process manufacturers rank Industrial IoT (IIoT) sensors/devices as their second highest priority, behind cloud networking.
Smart IIoT as part of a digitalization strategy
Adding IIoT sensors to your equipment is one of the first steps in digitalizing your operations. New smart IIoT sensors include increased processing and analytic capabilities that provide a richer set of real-time data for condition-based monitoring of equipment operations and support trend analysis that provides greater insights into equipment performance.
More and more IIoT sensors and devices feature wireless connectivity options that support the expected increase in the number of mobile plant assets and staff. While Wi-Fi and low-power wireless sensors will remain to support some operations, you will need to deploy IIoT sensors and mobile devices that support 4G/LTE or CBRS cellular radio technology to connect and digitalize business and mission-critical equipment and processes.
4G/LTE cellular technology is a reliable, secure communications standard that has been deployed in public and industrial networks for more than a decade, and there is a large and mature ecosystem of 4G/LTE-capable devices with more than 21,500 LTE-capable devices as of December 2021. Of these 21,500 devices, more than 1,700 are low-power, IoT-type devices. The table taken from the January 2022 GSA LTE Ecosystem report provides the LTE low-power category and capabilities of these devices.
There are also more than 500 devices that support the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band and a growing ecosystem of over 1000 5G devices.
Nokia offers a broad range of 4G and 5G ruggedized industrial devices that reliably connect smart IIoT sensors and other equipment wirelessly to digitalize your processes. The Nokia industrial user equipment portfolio also includes devices with IP67 or IP68 ratings to provide pervasive coverage, sufficient capacity and scalability for efficient communications between people and machines in harsh work environments.
Edge computing is an essential part of IIoT
It’s important to understand where adding smart IIoT sensors provides the necessary endpoint or end-device data that’s needed to digitalize the plant, as well as where the data is processed and analyzed.
This data is the life-blood of the plant’s operations so protecting it from hackers and security threats is critical. One simple and practical way to secure this critical data is to store it on-premises on local edge servers.
Cloud networking providers may use the term “edge-cloud”, or generically “cloud-computing”, as an alternative to edge computing in situations where this critical operational data is transferred to a data center that is outside the plant.
However, there are several security risks with this approach. The main concern heard from plant management is that this critical data is transmitted over the internet and stored remotely. While the threat of this data being lost or compromised is low when a strong plant cybersecurity plan is in place, it’s still considered lower risk when this operational data remains on-premises.
Automation is a key focus of operational technologies (OT), which depend on integration and analysis of data from IoT sensors and other devices in real time using algorithms created by artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). This operational data processing, which is made possible by ubiquitous wireless and wireline connectivity, must be completed close enough to the automated operation that edge clouds are necessary to ensure ultra-low latencies.
The Nokia MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) provides a high performance, resilient and secure edge solution for mission-critical industrial OT needs. It comes with a portfolio of ready-to-use industrial applications as well as industrial connectors to link to systems from a variety of vertically oriented original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The Nokia MXIE is an ecosystem-neutral platform that enables enterprises to swiftly adopt any edge cloud application from public cloud providers, industrial partners and independent software vendor (ISV) applications to accelerate their digital transformation.
Private wireless network as the digital foundation
Reliable and pervasive connectivity is a fundamental cornerstone for digitalization of your plant, which depends on efficient communications between sensors and machines, as well as people. As you continue to digitalize your plant operations, more and more of your smart IIoT equipment and assets will be connected wirelessly. To support wireless connections to your critical machines and operations control, you will need to upgrade your wireless network infrastructure.
Upgrading your Wi-Fi network to Wi-Fi 6/6e would be an obvious choice, except for the fact that even this latest Wi-Fi generation has performance issues with coverage, signal degradation due to interference, and mobile device scalability when connecting to access points or handing over from one access point to another. Adding Wi-Fi access points to address these issues becomes costly and makes it challenging to manage and optimize the network. Wi-Fi networks cannot provide the deterministic quality of service and round-trip latency (device-to-network-to-device) that’s often required when supporting mission-critical machine control and communications.
A more reliable, and often more cost-effective, network solution is to connect your mission-critical assets and operations with a private LTE/CBRS wireless network. A private wireless network is typically owned by the company and only radiates within the plant’s industrial complex. It can use licensed, unlicensed or, in the United States, shared CBRS spectrum. Because the network is owned, and often operated, by the company’s IT department, it only provides connectivity to LTE devices that are subscribed and authenticated to it, making it a highly secure. Unlike a public LTE network, a private wireless network can be tuned and radio-optimized to meet the performance levels needed to run your mission-critical operations.
The Nokia Digital Automation Cloud platform provides a high-performance, end-to-end 4G/5G private wireless network that is designed and purpose-built to support mission-critical industrial applications. It can provide this reliable 4G connectivity today, and it can be easily upgraded to provide 5G connectivity in the future.
Nokia private wireless networks in the process industry
Nokia is an industry leader in private wireless networking with more than 480 networks deployed worldwide, of which over 80 are in the manufacturing industry.
Several process manufacturing companies have already realized the benefits of deploying private wireless LTE and 5G networks.
- Butachimie, a chemical company in Alsace, France, deployed a Nokia private LTE network together with Orange Business services.
- BASF, in Tarragona, Spain, deployed a Nokia private 5G network together with CellNex.
- Dow Chemical, in the United States, deployed a Nokia private LTE network together with Kyndryl.
Nokia, together with our large eco-system of partners, can help you achieve your digitalization goals with end-to-end private wireless networking solutions. Let us help you get started in your digital transformation by contacting us at Nokia.com.
