Volkswagen is embarking on a major technological upgrade of more than a dozen of its European auto manufacturing plants.

The company's goal is to connect all of its major manufacturing equipment to the cloud so it can use technologies like artificial intelligence to compute things like predictive maintenance of machines and to reduce reworking of vehicles.
But 5G is nowhere to be found in Volkswagen's massive upgrade project, despite the fact that the effort appears to be a perfect fit for the technology.

(Light Reading, August 10)

Gareth Owen's key takeaways:

Volkwagen (VW) together with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and integration partner Siemens is deploying an Industrial IoT (IIoT) Cloud that will connect all the company’s 30,000 facilities, its 122 manufacturing plants plus its global supply chain partners.
VW’s IIoT Cloud is the perfect example of a use case routinely touted by mobile operators and infrastructure vendors as ideal for 5G private networks.
Although VW recognises the potential of 5G, the company does not have any concrete plans to use LTE/5G cellular networks, including in its manufacturing plants, and maintains that connectivity will be provided via Wi-Fi and wired networks.
In recent years there has been a lot of focus on the use of 5G as the optimum wireless solution for industrial IoT type applications. However, the introduction of new Wi-Fi technologies over the next two to three years may level the playing field and provide an alternative solution.
The latest Wi-Fi technology, Wi-Fi 6E, incorporates many new, advanced technologies, which makes it significantly superior to previous Wi-Fi generations. These game changing technologies will enable Wi-Fi to compete against 5G in many of the more demanding applications currently being targeted by the cellular industry, particularly for indoor applications.
Wi-F is ubiquitous and will remain a more cost-effective solution than cellular for many local area applications. It may well become the network of choice for small, medium - and as VW demonstrates - even large enterprises rather than cellular-based private networks.

5G Absent From VW&#039;s Big Manufacturing Plant Upgrade

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5G Absent From VW's Big Manufacturing Plant Upgrade