Tom Richter discusses the solutions that drive manufacturing productivity, sustainability and worker safety
As the Head of Manufacturing Verticals at Nokia Cloud & Network Services, Tom Richter is responsible for the design and specification of tailored network solutions based on the specific vertical requirements of manufacturing companies. With more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and commercial management and a profound technical understanding of the underlying technologies, he leads the segment sales for factory digitalization and smart manufacturing solutions.
“Since I last spoke to Manufacturing Today in 2023, we’ve come quite a long way,” Tom begins. “Generally, there has been an uptick in the use of our solutions as a foundational technology for universal connectivity in the manufacturing space.”
To make Industry 4.0 goals a reality, digitalization is the key. Nokia offers the critical communications and cloud network foundation needed to fuel the digital transformation journey, offering advanced data communication and networking solutions that support critical operations. With a modernized communications foundation, manufacturers can increase productivity, agility, and flexibility, and improve supply chain resilience and visibility throughout their operations. With intelligent automation, data center optimization and physical-digital fusion in operations, manufacturers can take advantage of new efficiencies to achieve sustainability targets.
“While this uptake may be slow, it is certainly robust. Over the last two years, we have tailored our product offerings further and implemented features that are relevant to manufacturing. We’ve also enhanced our partner portfolio and brought ecosystem partners on board with whom we collaborate to address topics like data integration, device management, and cybersecurity. Those topics are critically important to manufacturing customers, who must comply with rules and regulations, particularly in the process and chemical manufacturing sectors for instance. As soon as they start to use the technology commercially, they need assurance that it provides security.
“When we last spoke, the main topic of conversation was the metaverse. Today, it’s more about AI, in all its iterations. We recently attended the latest Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to showcase how we intend to use AI in different ways in our products to build holistic solutions for our customers. Those concepts are centered around worker augmentation and worker safety, and how we use different artificial intelligence models to support workers. From different languages to data fusion techniques that make sense out of the data, we have reached the stage where we are seeing real commercial deployment and implementation, and we’re having conversations with customers about how to integrate solutions into their existing heterogenous infrastructures and environments,” Tom shares.
Indeed, Nokia has launched MX Workmate, a powerful and OT-compliant GenAI assistant that enables natural language-based interactions with connected workers. Building on this, manufacturers can bring comprehensive contextual awareness to operations with Nokia MX Context, which leverages data fusion and seamlessly integrates with MX Workmate to make intelligent automation a reality. It allows businesses to ingest data from diverse sensors, apply data-driven excellence, gain actionable insights into operations and identify intelligent automation opportunities. 
Ensuring worker safety is paramount in all industrial settings, and technology already plays an important role in solutions like smart PPE, sensing devices for hazard detection, and alarms that warn workers of impending dangers or emergencies. Now manufacturers can build on these solutions by gaining unprecedented insight into workplace operational conditions and worker situational awareness to help prevent hazardous situations, reduce accident rates, and even save lives. By harnessing the potential of automation, IoT sensory intelligence, AI and machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, data analytics and more, worker safety goals are easily within reach.
“It takes time and change to be able to implement those technologies,” Tom continues, “and many customers have other topics to tackle that are higher on their agendas, such as energy prices, emissions reduction strategies, and supply chain disruptions. While those topics take priority in the boardroom, we can position ourselves strategically to make sure we explain how we can support solving those issues without being at the core of the solution.”
Industry 4.0 and 5G factory automation are bringing incredible opportunities to the manufacturing sector. In a 2022 survey of more than 1000 manufacturers by ABI Research and Nokia, 90 percent are considering 4G or 5G private wireless technologies to improve the flexibility and agility of their operations. The days of inflexible, immovable, locked-in linear production lines and inaccurate asset tracking are over. A 5G smart factory optimizes everything. In the 5G smart factory, people and machines work safely together to increase productivity, improve efficiency and produce goods in a way that achieves carbon neutrality objectives.
With the right smart manufacturing network and expertise, plant operations and business goals become a reality. A smart manufacturing network provides a reliable, secure and high-capacity foundation that supports all aspects of digital transformation. Nokia provides high performance, easy-fit industrial-grade private wireless solutions and applications combined with proven expertise to help the 5G smart factory.
Nokia high-performance network solutions, platforms and intelligent business applications help manufacturers speed processes, lower operational costs and improve visibility and quality. By leveraging secure, scalable private wireless networks for a more flexible manufacturing environment, manufacturers can adjust operations and processes to meet business needs while protecting data and IP. Nokia manufacturing networking solutions provide the capacities, throughput and connectivity needed to support new levels of automation and flexibility while bringing knowledge, technical experience and support to ensure 5G smart manufacturing objectives are met.
“Companies across the process manufacturing sector for example, including those in food and beverage, paper and pulp, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals, are striving to boost productivity and ensure worker safety while enhancing sustainable practices. Digitalization and Industry 4.0 technologies offer powerful tools to achieve these goals by improving asset control, deriving valuable insights from data, and supporting continuous operations.
“For example, we have previously partnered with Orange and French chemical giant, Butachimie, to provide private wireless connectivity, as a backbone of the company’s digital transformation. Additionally, the collaboration between Kyndryl and Nokia in private networks and edge computing spans multiple industries, with a significant presence in industrial manufacturing. Together, we have deployed private wireless networks for Chevron Phillips Chemical to improve connectivity across eight US facilities, i.e. deploying coverage for sites that are 20 square miles (9680 football fields!), while supporting initiatives like connected worker programs and real-time operations.
“However, our enterprise technology solutions are not limited to manufacturing campuses and are being deployed across an array of verticals – from ports and mining to healthcare. Most recently, we’ve collaborated with Boldyn Networks to deploy a private wireless network that will help Hola Oulu hospital to integrate a new generation of healthcare devices such as smart glasses with augmented technologies and wireless wearable technologies for surgical theaters.
“An increasing number of manufacturers are embracing Industry 4.0, with a significant ramp-up in the deployment of IoT devices. Beyond just implementing connected devices, the real value of digital transformation in process manufacturing lies in integrating new applications and devices with robust, reliable enterprise wireless connectivity and edge computing. This integration enables people, processes, sensors, robots, and legacy machines to collaborate seamlessly, driving superior business outcomes.
“There’s a lot of work to be done to make use of what’s available. We need to work with stakeholders to achieve this. We have a vision of what this could look like in five- or ten-years’ time but looking too far ahead shouldn’t detract from today’s manufacturing customers deploying what is at hand,” he concludes. “The coming years should be used not only to look ahead to 6G for example but also to gain further experience and benefit from the fruits we’ve already harvested.”