Volkswagen has gone live with a local 5G standalone network at its main plant in Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony. Together with a pilot 5G network at its factory of the future in Dresden, the Transparent Factory, these two networks form testbeds for the company’s plan to fully network all manufacturing equipment in all its factories.

The 5G local network at Wolfsburg initially covers the main production development centre and the pilot hall. The pilot project will test whether the 5G technology meets the requirements of vehicle production with a view to developing this for industrial series production in the future.

A dedicated 5G radio frequency will be used to safeguard secure, delay-free transmission of data. The company’s “Transparent Factory” in Dresden has also put a so-called “5G island” into operation.

Volkswagen is undertaking the installation and operation of the local 5G infrastructure itself. For the campus network in Wolfsburg, the company applied for and was allocated a private radio frequency at 3.7 to 3.8 GHz with 100 MHz bandwidth by the Federal Network Agency. The network equipment for the 5G pilot network is supplied by the Finnish telecommunications group Nokia.

There are around 5,000 robots at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, as well as many other machines and systems. Volkswagen is aiming for secure, delay-free transmission of data to control and monitor the plant robots and other equipment. Volkwagen says that it is installing 5G because with extremely short latency times of up to one millisecond, data transmission rates in the gigabit range and considerable reliability even with high utilisation, a 5G local network makes many smart factory applications at Wolfsburg possible for the first time.

One scenario to be tested in the pilot phase under real-life laboratory conditions in Wolfsburg is the wireless upload of data to manufactured vehicles.

At the company’s Transparent Factory in Dresden in southeastern Germany, a pilot factory for the Volkswagen brand that is testing innovative technologies in normal operation for the pilot-scale ID.3 series, a 5G island has been put into operation as well. Networked control for a driverless transportation system is being developed further in collaboration with Porsche, Audi and the Dresden University of Technology. The sensors in the driverless transportation system transmit the environment data to a cloud platform using 5G. This calculates the route to an ID.3 body and sends back the information in real time. The project in Dresden is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

“In implementing our ACCELERATE strategy we are working at full speed to transform our Volkswagen sites into smart factories. Our goal is to continuously optimise our production and make it even more efficient and flexible. We believe that 5G technology has great potential for innovation, from the use of intelligent robots and driverless transportation systems to networked control of plant and machinery in real time up to wireless software flashing of manufactured vehicles,” said Christian Vollmer, Member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen Brand responsible for Production and Logistics.

“Efficient wireless communication in real time will be crucial for flexible production in the future. 5G has the potential to be one such driver of the Industrial Internet of Things. Our aim is therefore to build up extensive experience in the operation and industrial use of 5G technology,” said Beate Hofer, CIO of the Volkswagen Group. In the long term, the campus network at the Wolfsburg site is expected to cover large parts of the 6.5 square-kilometre plant site.