NEW YORK - Verizon Business today announced its private 5G wireless network is live at The Smart Factory @ Wichita, a new immersive, Industry 4.0 experience centre convened by Deloitte*.

Verizon works with Deloitte and other Smart Factory ecosystem companies to advance the execution of smart manufacturing and enables manufacturers to quickly adopt state-of-the-art, Industry 4.0 solutions and technologies that drive new business models to boost quality, productivity and sustainability. As a Builder-level collaborator in The Smart Factory @ Wichita ecosystem of 20 world-leading organisations, Verizon intends to leverage this network of companies to help customers across industries innovate their approach to improved connectivity and use of data to improve real-time coordination between people and assets. Verizon’s private 5G wireless network provides features that will help drive select use cases at The Smart Factory @ Wichita, including:

• Increased shop floor visibility: Use of predictive maintenance analytics on assets can improve uptime and productivity by addressing ~50% of the root causes of downtime.

• Improved quality assurance and reduced defects: Detection of potential defects in manufactured products or services before they reach customers, thereby improving the customer experience and reducing waste.

• Material handling automation: Orchestration and management of AGV and AMR fleets can lead to improved reliability, consistency, safety and accuracy of moving material across the plant.

• Workplace safety: Reduces human error and manual workloads to minimise injury and productivity loss.

“The Smart Factory @ Wichita is a microcosm of industry 4.0 itself, with a wide range of enterprise partners, suppliers, researchers, and complementary technologies coming together in one ecosystem to make a supercharged impact. 5G brings massive bandwidth and incredibly fast data speeds to the equation to help make these impacts replicable in a plethora of business applications at virtually any scale — customers have the flexibility to dream big and start small,” said Jennifer Artley, SVP, 5G Acceleration, Verizon Business. “5G is the backbone of Industry 4.0, and we’re so excited to bring it to Deloitte’s The Smart Factory @ Wichita to help catalyse scalable, collaborative innovation.”

The Smart Factory @ Wichita showcases advanced manufacturing techniques in a variety of applications on a shop floor to help organisations navigate their most complex manufacturing challenges. The Factory, located on the Innovation Campus at Wichita State University, includes a fully operational production line and experiential labs for developing and exploring smart manufacturing technology and strategy. Visitors to the facility experience smart manufacturing concepts that bring together the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and more to create interconnected systems that use data to drive real-time, intelligent decision making.

“As smart manufacturing begins to be executed at scale, the number of devices, amount of data and information available to manufacturers continues to dramatically increase,” said Jason Bergstrom, Smart Factory Go-to-Market leader and principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “In bringing together Verizon’s 5G experience with Deloitte’s tailored combination of business strategy, technology, and deep industry experience with other Smart Factory @ Wichita ecosystem collaborators, the organisations can help clients accelerate the speed and adoption of operational transformations.”

This work with Deloitte at The Smart Factory @ Wichita furthers the commitment between the two companies to co-innovate, leveraging Verizon 5G and edge computing to build applications and solutions that drive both the retail and manufacturing industries forward.