PARTNER FEATURE: The information industry has become a driving force behind the upgrade and reconstruction of the manufacturing sector. This shift has drawn increasing attention from countries around the world. In 2013, Germany proposed Industry 4.0 as a national strategy, aiming to leverage the IoT to develop digital intelligent production processes and make German manufacturing more competitive. The following year, the US advocated the Industrial Internet concept, which uses the Internet and big data to improve the manufacturing efficiency and reinforce American manufacturing capabilities in key industries. Other countries, such as China, Japan, the UK, and France have also put forward similar national strategies as the fourth industrial revolution – characterized by the fusion of information technology and traditional manufacturing – becomes reality.

As the information carrier for smart manufacturing, the Industrial IoT allows for efficient management of upstream and downstream sectors and the industry chain and product life cycle as a whole. It provides an open global network to connect people, data, and machines by using such technologies as field bus, industrial Ethernet, 5G, NB-IoT, and eMTC. China Telecom joined hands with Huawei and other partners to apply NB-IoT networks to the smart manufacturing process and through persistent effort is optimizing their production processes to significantly elevate efficiency.

NB-IoT Improves the Quality and Efficiency of Mold Management

Molds are essential production materials, but their management in the traditional manufacturing industry faces several challenges:

  1. To count the quantity of the mold inventory, asset managers need to manually look for and record the mold information onsite. This is a waste of time and labor, and is often expensive. What’s more, manual data collection may cause data loss or error.
  2. The mold usage information is manually recorded, such as the molding time, forming period, tooling opening and closing numbers, and abnormal downtime. These are turned into management reports, which are then manually generated to assess the performance of the relevant operators. However, inaccurate records can affect the decision-making and judgment on production capacity, operation processes, and staff competence.
  3. After molds are transferred to contractors, the contractors may outsource to unauthorized subcontractors. The transferred molds may be illegally used for the production of other competitors. Information regarding usage and maintenance of these molds are not strictly recorded, which may pose risks to the production quality.

China Telecom, Huawei and a manufacturing company have joined forces to create a state of the art NB-IoT mold management solution. This solution automatically collects core data, such as the mold locations, tooling opening and closing numbers, and forming period. This allows SaaS-based execution to provide services such as asset, spare part, and capacity management, mold operations, maintenance and repair management, and enterprise-level mold sharing.

There are numerous advantages to using NB-IoT for mold management. It consumes little power so has a long battery lifespan of several years. This meets the mold management requirements for mobility and maintenance-free terminals. In addition, NB-IoT signal has strong penetration capabilities. Ubiquitous network connection can be provided inside factories with no need for cable restructuring, which makes the system easy and quick to set up. NB-IoT also has superior positioning performance, enabling terminals to be used in all conditions. The location information can be tracked even when GPS cannot be used (for example, indoors).

The manufacturing company has already completed large-scale deployment of NB-IoT mold sensors on all product lines. The deployment significantly reduces mold maintenance costs and improves mold turnover efficiency. The E2E solution means their mold assets are fully under control throughout the lifecycle.

NB-IoT Transmits Heat Pump Operating Data to Improve the Maintenance Efficiency and Product Performance

With the launch of the “coal-to-electricity” project, heat pumps are widely used in northern China. However, the maintenance of heat pumps is difficult because they are scattered in harsh environment and consumers can only tolerate minimum downtime. China Telecom, Huawei, and a heat pump vendor built an NB-IoT heat pump monitoring system to address this problem. It uses sensors to collect data such as the water outlet and inlet temperatures, expansion valve steps, pipe temperature, discharge temperature, current, and voltage. This information is then transmitted to the cloud for big data analysis so faults can be identified quickly or even before they arise. Once a fault is detected, the system automatically generates a work order to ensure prompt maintenance. Statistics show that the after-sales maintenance cost is reduced by half, and the customer satisfaction is significantly improved after NB-IoT deployment.

The NB-IoT system also enables heat pump manufacturers to improve their products’ performance. Previously, heat pumps were isolated, which made it difficult for makers to collect operating data and forced them to make design changes based on customer complaints and maintenance records, which were often unreliable. After deploying NB-IoT heat pumps, manufacturers have access to an abundance of first-hand data, from which they can identify design defects and make improvements to optimize performance. Figures show that the energy saving performance of the optimized heat pumps increases from 80% to 85%.

Heat pumps are widely distributed and typically installed in complex environments. NB-IoT solution’s wide coverage, strong penetration ability, and ubiquitous connections allow heat pumps to be deployed anywhere. The system also has a longer life cycle than 2G models as it can be evolved to 5G networks, ensuring long-term, reliable operations. With these unparalleled advantages, NB-IoT pumps have become rapidly popular. 200,000 systems have already been deployed, with various other companies looking to adopt the technology.

Applications of NB-IoT are not limited to design, production, and maintenance. It can also play a role in sales, logistics, warehousing, and all other stages of the entire manufacturing life cycle. For example, NB-IoT terminals can integrate with home appliances to track delivery and warehousing and improve operating efficiency along the supply chain. Knowing when appliances are switched on would also automatically provide sales data for manufacturers to understand dealer operating data and prevent channel conflicts. These connected appliances could then create repeat sales opportunities. For instance, NB-IoT can be used to track the consumable usage in water purifiers and air purifiers, to achieve precise sales of these consumables. Similarly, the maintenance status of air conditioners and washing machines can be tracked to promote the sales of cleaning services.

Smart manufacturing creates a broad market space for Industrial IoT technologies. According to analytic organization Zion, the global Industrial IoT sector could be worth USD232.2 billion by 2023. NB-IoT, highlighted by wide coverage, low power consumption, and massive connectivity, will play an important role in the Industrial IoT market. As the application scope of NB-IoT expands, it will be used in collaboration with other Industrial IoT technologies to further upgrade the manufacturing industry.