IBM and Verizon’s new partnership will offer mobile asset tracking and management solutions powered by 5G, AI, and cognitive automation to optimize operations, production quality, and worker safety. Will this be the transformative technology smart factories need, to get even smarter?
As the world enters the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), companies are hoping to propel business operations with promising emerging technologies such as AI, 5G, and automation. According to a key finding by Industry 4.0 & Smart Manufacturing Adoption ReportOpens a new window , 36% of North American manufacturers have extensively adopted Industry 4.0 technologies, followed by Europe (27%), and China (20%). Furthermore, Industry 4.0 technologies are more prevalent in the automotive industry, electronic industry, and process industries. With the high adoption of Industry 4.0, there is a paradigm shift towards digital manufacturing with smart factories. A smart factory is the future of the industry where downtime, waste, product failures will become ideas of a bygone era, and enhanced operations, productivity, and efficiency will drive an enterprise’s business value and revenue.
Capgemini Smart Factories @ Scale reportedOpens a new window that nearly 70% of manufacturers had kicked off smart factory initiatives in 2019 and that 75% of industrial companies believe 5G is a key enabler to their digital transformationOpens a new window . Even though the pandemic has dampened 5G initiatives, it has not dampened Verizon’s growing efforts to make 5G a ubiquitous technology. This week, IBM and Verizon announced a partnership to advance the next generation of industrial operations with digital technologies such as 5G, AI, edge computing.
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The collaboration will combine Verizon’s 5G and Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) capabilities, IoT devices, and sensors at the edge, with IBM’s expertise in AI, hybrid multi-cloud, edge computing, asset management, and connected operations.
Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications, Blockchain and Ecosystems, IBM saysOpens a new window , “Through this collaboration, we plan to build upon our longstanding relationship with Verizon to help industrial enterprises capitalize on joint solutions that are designed to be multi-cloud ready, secured and scalable, from the data center out to the enterprise edge.â€
How Can Industrial Enterprises Benefit from This Alliance?
The IBM and Verizon partnership plans to offer two industrial solutions – mobile asset tracking and management solutions, and 5G and MEC co-innovations for real-time cognitive automation use cases.
Mobile asset tracking and management solutions will integrate IBM’s Maximo Monitor, IBM Watson, Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network, MEC capabilities, ThingSpace IoT platform, and Critical Asset Sensor solution (CAS) to monitor asset health, predict near real-time machine failure and improve production quality and business operations.
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The second solution will harness the power of 5G and MEC to derive actionable insights for better efficiency and innovations in smart factoriesOpens a new window . Leveraging 5G’s low latency and faster bandwidth, enterprises can interact with IoT devices in real-time and develop innovative applications such as remote control robotics, near real-time cognitive video analysis, and plant automation.
With this partnership, IBM clearly strengthens its foothold in the AI and advanced analytics market while Verizon strives to rule the 5G and edge computing domain. Currently, Verizon offers its 5G Ultra Wideband network in parts of 35 cities in the U.S.
Along the same lines, last year, AT&T announcedOpens a new window a multiyear partnership with Microsoft to advance innovations in 5G and cloud computing.
Tami Erwin, the CEO of Verizon Business, says, “This collaboration is all about enabling the future of the industry in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Combining the high speed and low latency of Verizon’s 5G UWB Network and MEC capabilities with IBM’s expertise in enterprise-grade AI and production automation can provide industrial innovation on a massive scale. It can help companies increase automation, minimize waste, lower costs, and offer their clients a better response time and customer experience.â€
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