Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia said that it is working with BSNL to implement the next level of industrial automation, leveraging 4G LTE technology to enable greater operational efficiency at Nokia’s Chennai plant.

Sanjay Malik, Vice President and head of the India Market at Nokia, said: “Our collaboration with BSNL will enable us to leverage the latest technology advancements and continue in our efforts to build the increasingly digitized and connected factory of the future. It will pave the path to smart manufacturing in the 5G era.”

Nokia's Chennai factory recently crossed the 4-million-unit production milestone in its tenth year of operations.

The factory will now leverage Industry 4.0 solutions such as Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), connected Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, and the Internet of Things to enhance operations and increase productivity.

Industry 4.0 relies on low-latency, high-reliability networks as well as capabilities in robotics and artificial intelligence to drive new levels of automation and data exchange in manufacturing industries, resulting in improved operational efficiency and reduced costs.

The advancements in communications technology with 4G LTE provides lower latency and better network reliability to connect manufacturing equipment and time-critical applications to transform factory operations.

Nokia said it has deployed the network using its Micro Core Network and Multi-access Edge Computing platform, delivering edge cloud capabilities to process data closer to end-users, lowering latency and ensuring personnel are alerted to any anomalies in production so they can be quickly resolved.

The network will also help increase flexibility and agility enabling production lines to be changed more quickly for the introduction of new products. Increased levels of automation will help in shop-floor processes such as remote monitoring of robots and control of automated guided vehicles.

Anupam Srivastava, Chairman and Managing Director at BSNL, said: “BSNL has undertaken several initiatives to ensure India keeps pace with 5G evolution globally. Nokia is already one of our key partners in developing the 5G eco-system, and now we are exploring use cases such as Industry 4.0 that can benefit tremendously with 5G. This network deployment for Industry 4.0 at Nokia’s Chennai factory that can be scaled to 5G demonstrates our preparedness to take advantage of new opportunities that will emerge with 5G and IoT in India.”