WEG has just announced that Nokia is taking part of the ‘Open Lab WEG / V2COM’ project to accelerate and develop Industry 4.0 solutions in the country with Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) platform. 

As Pioneer, Open Lab WEG / V2COM is conducted in partnership with the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI) and Anatel, and will use Nokia DAC solution to validate the quality and economic model of the solutions to be developed under the project. 

Nokia's automation platform ensures a reliable, high-bandwidth, low-latency private network with local edge computing resources, voice and video services, as well as an application catalog. It is a compact and easy to implement the platform, consisting of network equipment, a cloud-based operation monitoring system and industrial connectors that facilitate standard and specific protocol connectivity for the industrial segment. 

Expected to be concluded within a year, the project is being developed in a real production environment, in one of WEG's factories, in Jaraguá do Sul, state of Santa Catarina. The results will contribute to Anatel's studies on regulation of 5G private networks for business uses. 

The factory will serve as a laboratory, in which a private 5G network will be tested simultaneously with a conventional network provided by a MNO (Mobile Network Operator). Several practical and advanced cases of Industry 4.0 will be developed to identify productivity gains that the solution may bring, allowing to consolidate consistent models to be applied in industrial automation projects.

Considering the technology progress after the pandemic period and favorable conditions of use of 5G network, two radio frequencies will be evaluated: one, below 6-gigahertz (GHz), and the other, higher, between 27.5 GHz and 27.9 GHz. An independent research institute will do all required performance analysis. 

As stated by Guilherme Spina, Director of V2Com at WEG: “The 5G project at the WEG plant will bring the possibility not only of supporting official studies for the use of technology in Brazil, but will also accelerate the development and testing of WEG / V2COM products and solutions for our customers ”.

Marcelo Entreconti, Nokia Head of Enterprise for Latin America, says: “Our project with WEG is the latest example of the use of Nokia's 5G private networks to leverage, as a leading supplier and technological partner, the level of Industry 4.0 in Brazil. With our technology, we bring increased productivity to several economy sectors. We are committed to Industry demands, from the training of people, such as our project with Open Lab Senai, as well as the development of case studies such as those being tested and applied by WEG ".

With more than 220 large corporate customers worldwide - where more than 30 adopt 5G - and an extensive ecosystem of key partners, Nokia has recently been named a leader in private wireless networks by GlobalData.