ENGAGING 5G NETWORKS WITH A SMART FACTORY ECOSYSTEM: A case study of Smarta Fabriker

Abstract

The following research plumbs the field of conjunction amid two separate industries, those of telecommunications and industrial manufacturing. These two entities are undergoing a period of transition and turnaround, attributable to the innovations respectively brought out by 5G networks and Industry 4.0. The research project Smarta Fabriker, promoted by the Göteborgs Tekniska College, furnishes evidences for the investigation of a smart factory prototype built in collaboration with over 50 companies specialized in different fields. Moreover, the analysis goes through the collaboration of the Västra Götaland region with different education entities in Göteborg and with the innovative cluster of companies located in the Lindholmen Science Park, in accordance with the theoretical fundamentals set by the Triple Helix framework. A foremost stress is put on the connectivity of the factory, provided by Swedish telecom operator Ericsson, in order to dig up a strategy for 5G operators in a smart factory environment. The research provides a managerial perspective to the smart factory world, finding out the business transformations of different categories of companies (i.e. industrial manufacturers, telecom operators and IT consultants) together with the depiction of a comprehensive value-creation chain of the entire ecosystem and the classification of the technologies involved in the project with respect to their status in the market.