Enabling the smart factory:
responsive, adaptive, connected
Nokia factory in Oulu, Finland
manufactures and designs the
production processes for a variety of
telecommunication products like base
stations that, once optimized, can be
transferred and scaled to other
production facilities worldwide. With
new products flowing in monthly to
be tested, including future 5G
products, changes to the factory
floor layout are constant and
flexibility is paramount.
Traditionally, Oulu Factory has
managed machine and device
telecommunications through
ethernet cables – and as the factory
floor changes, so do the cable
requirements, adding significant
costs in rewiring work. Increasing the
level of automation was thus a key
objective – not only in production but
also in the material feed, which had
been done manually until now.
One of the enablers for automating
the material flow is the Omron LD
Autonomous Intelligent Vehicle (AIV),
which delivers material from the
storage to the production line,
without any human interference.
The AIV was initially connected to
a separately dedicated Wi-Fi network
along a fixed route from storage to
production. However, when the AIV
was taken into daily use, it soon
became apparent that network
coverage was insufficient along the
route and connectivity was lost
during handovers. The AIV travels
long distances throughout the
Break the chains with pervasive wireless connectivity
factory floor, navigating through
bulky metal storage racks and when
the connection is lost, the AIV must
be manually reconnected to the Wi-Fi
in order for a new task to be
completed. This resulted in inefficient
material feed to the production line
and tied up personnel who could have
been more productively allocated elsewhere.

Reliable automated material feed
with private wireless network
Ensuring a pervasive reliable
connectivity was essential for
Oulu Factory in their automation
journey and selected Nokia Digital
Automation Cloud platform, a
private wireless solution, to be
installed.
The Omron AIV settings were simply
adjusted for LTE connectivity and
automation of the material
transportation has since improved
significantly. Resources previously
tied up in AIV support can now be
employed elsewhere (see graph for
results). Likewise, with private
wireless coverage, the AIV is no
longer restricted to its fixed Wi-Fi
network area but can now be
utilized anywhere on the factory
floor, without requiring separate network reconfiguration. As network
capacity has increased, Oulu Factory
is also considering a fleet of
connected AIVs to perform various
tasks on the shop floor.
“This kind of pervasive connectivity
now unlocks the potential for a host
of other use cases within the same
network,” says Erno Marjakangas,
head of excellence and
development, Nokia Oulu factory.
“In addition to the mobile robots,
we’ve already connected various
production testers and sensors and
we’re investigating other use cases
such as video analytics in the
assembly process, wireless
manufacturing robotics and digital
twins for optimization of production operations.

Find more information at onestore.nokia.com