Collaboration aims to grow the 5G ecosystem, develop new Infocomm and Media capabilities and create new applications and business use-cases
SINGAPORE – 06 MAY 2020
IBM (NYSE: IBM), the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), M1 Limited (M1) and Samsung today announced Singapore’s first 5G Industry 4.0 trial, to demonstrate the transformative impact of 5G for enterprises and drive the next bound of Singapore’s digital economy. This announcement is part of IBM’s edge computing solutions for the 5G era announced at IBM Think 2020.
The trial aims to develop insights and showcase benefits of 5G in Industry 4.01. It will be an innovation model that allows for development, testing and benchmarking of 5G-enabled solutions that can be applied across various industries.
This partnership consists of the following three main areas:
- 5G Innovation: The trial aims to design, develop, test and benchmark 5G-enabled industry 4.0 solutions that can be applied across various industries.
- 5G Solution Showcase: Solutions developed will be featured at IBM’s Industry 4.0 Studio2 5G Solutions Showcase. The showcase will feature Industry 4.0 solutions powered by 5G and leveraging capabilities such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence. The aim is to help proliferate 5G solutions to different industry sectors in Singapore.
- 5G Solutions Roll-out: IBM and Samsung will evaluate successful solutions developed during the project for possible use in their operations in a broad range of markets and sectors.
5G’s capabilities such as faster data transfer and more-rapid response times, when coupled with other transformative technologies like AI, can enable significant improvements to manufacturing processes. The project will test 5G-enabled use cases for manufacturing, focusing on three main areas:
- Automated visual inspection using AI for image recognition and video analytics;
- Improved equipment monitoring and predictive maintenance using AI-enabled acoustic insights; and
- Assembly and debugging using augmented reality to improve productivity and quality
The trial at the Industry 4.0 Studio will commence in Q2, 2020 and will be conducted at IBM Singapore’s Centre of Competency (CoC) for Smart Factory Operating Model for sharing of ideas and best practices. This makes IBM Singapore the ideal location for the trial, and solutions could be ultimately rolled out to other IBM Manufacturing sites, globally.
Successful 5G-enabled Industry 4.0 use-cases developed from this trial could be demonstrated for manufacturing enterprises and applied to production, service, quality control, and testing across a broad range of industries.
Partnership between IBM, IMDA, M1 and Samsung
IBM will implement and test Industry 4.0 use cases that will leverage IBM’s AI, IoT, edge, and augmented reality technologies, and network architecture built on IBM systems using open solutions infrastructure from Red Hat.
We want to complement Singapore’s Smart Nation and Digital Economy efforts and empower enterprises and industry players with a robust and versatile 5G launch-pad through this trial. This will allow businesses to leverage digital technologies to create next-generation solutions and be responsive to rapidly changing market and 5G adoption in Singapore. IBM has built industry-leading hybrid cloud, AI and security capabilities underpinned by deep industry expertise. With support from IMDA and our strategic partners Samsung and M1, this collaboration will seed Singapore’s 5G capabilities and strengthen its position as a leading industrial innovation hub, and move us closer in fulfilling our Industry 4.0 vision,” said Martin Chee, Managing Director, IBM Singapore.
Together with Samsung as network and mobile solution provider and M1 as the telco provider, 5G network framework and skillsets could be established, allowing the solutions and the 5G framework know-how to be rolled out from Singapore and commercialised in other countries.
“We are very pleased to partner with IBM, Samsung and IMDA for Singapore’s first 5G Industry 4.0 trial. This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us to collaborate withleading industry players to develop, test and roll-out innovative 5G-enabled industry 4.0 solutions that will enhance smart manufacturing processes. Through this partnership, we hope to strengthen our in-house engineering capabilities in harnessing state-of—the-art 5G standalone (SA) technology for enabling hyper-connectivity, end-to-end network slicing, ultra-low latency, highly reliable and secured communications. With the recent award of one of Singapore’s two nationwide 5G licence, we will build a cutting-edge 5G network infrastructure and bring new consumer, enterprise and government use cases to the market as soon as the ecosystem matures, which we are certain will help bring Singapore’s Digital Economy forward.” said Denis Seek, Chief Technical Officer, M1.
“These are exciting times for the manufacturing industry. Already at the forefront of digital transformation, disruptive technologies and digitalization are now opening up new and unprecedented possibilities for the sector. New technologies will confer on tomorrow’s factories which will depend on ultra-reliable and low latency communication between machines, sensors, databases and workers’ mobile devices. Singapore has long been a leader in fostering innovation, and this 5G Industry 4.0 program is yet another validation of their technology leadership," said KC Choi, Executive Vice President & Global Head of B2B Business, Samsung Electronics. "By combining Samsung's end-to-end 5G Standalone (SA) network platform -- including phones and devices at the edge, we are witnessing ground breaking new Industry 4.0 capabilities for enterprise clients. More importantly, work and productivity aside, 5G will be a key tool in entertaining and connecting people. We are excited to be partnering with IBM, IMDA and M1 to help make the promise of 5G a reality today and showcase this in Singapore."
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