Ericsson, along with Vodafone Portugal, has enabled deployment of a mobile private network at Cimpor cement production units, which is the multinational cement and industrial materials producer.
The deployments went on to span three of the sites of Cimpor located in Portugal across Lhandra, Loulé, and Souselas, hence making utmost use of the private 5G technology from Ericsson in order to create purpose-built private networks having a latency of less than 10 milliseconds.
The new network of Cimpor goes on to span IoT sensors, autonomous vehicles, and other connected systems, hence enabling its engineers to track assets and also operations in a more efficient way, even within conditions that are heavily affected due to significant vibrations and dust.
The global CTO of Cimpor, Berkan Fidan, said in a statement that this execution of private 5G networks throughout Cimpor Cement Production Units goes on to mark a decisive step when it comes to strengthening resilience and efficiency along with the safety of their industrial operations. This technology lays the foundation for a new generation of digital applications and helps them to operate with much greater accuracy as well as responsiveness. This is just the beginning of a much broader journey.
It is well to be noted that Ericsson went on to offer drones and video cameras for safety tracking, and also worker tablets for the project. Vodafone Portugal went on to work with Cimpor in order to define the core network parameters and also helped with installation as well as configuration of radio equipment.
Apparently, the network was set up in a way that Cimpor can now go ahead and duplicate the model and also extend it throughout other areas of its business. The internal assessments of the manufacturers suggested that the ability of the network to support enhanced inventory along with maintenance optimization alone could translate into almost $1 million in yearly savings per plant through avoided downtime as well as asset failures.
Beyond the asset-level optimization, Cimpor claims that its private 5G networks give out a 1% increase in the overall efficiency, in what would go on to represent savings of almost $15 million, directly as well as indirectly in a yearly economic impact, while at the same time reducing around 140,000 tons of CO₂ emissions.
Henrique Fonseca, Vodafone Portugal’s Enterprise Business Unit executive board member, says that the execution of private 5G networks within the three Cimpor factories not just goes on to demonstrate the determined commitment of the company to its sustainable future but, at the same time, also reinforces the role such networks play when it comes to enhancing economic competitiveness, especially within industrial activities. Due to immediate communications along with large-scale sensing, data can go on to be interpreted quickly, and a wide array of remote activities do become possible, hence in a way widening the reach of these factories well beyond the locations that they are at.
Head of enterprise 5G at Ericsson, Manish Tiwari went on to add that as enterprises leap toward more automated as well as real-time processes, demand in terms of dependable private cellular networks does continue to rise, and through establishing a replicable approach throughout the three sites, Cimpor presently has quite a robust blueprint that it can apply throughout its broader international footprint.