Networked production processes and digital factories provide an important key to securing Germany’s competitiveness and innovative ability as a business location. The lighthouse project “IC4F” (Industrial Communication for Factories), in which Still plays a major role, has been dealing with this topic for almost three and a half years. The Hamburg-based intralogistics provider also hosted the final event, at which the results achieved with the project partners were presented at the end of October.

Everyone has been talking about the future project Industry 4.0 for years. However, important tools are still missing to be able to implement the new industry standard in practice. The PAiCE support program (Platforms, Additive Manufacturing, Imaging, Communication, Engineering) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is intended to remedy this situation. An associated project is the lighthouse project “IC4F” (Industrial Communications for Factories), in which the Hamburg-based intralogistics company Still is playing a major role. “The total of 15 project partners from industry and research – including Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom AG and Nokia – have spent the past three and a half years developing a technology kit for a trustworthy industrial communications and computing infrastructure,” explains Ansgar Bergmann, Project Manager from the Technology & Innovation department, who was responsible for Still’s project shares. This kit is based on an open architecture and allows modular extensions for new applications and communication technologies. “The results of our research,” Bergmann continues, “will enable users to select suitable information and communication technologies according to the requirements of an Industry 4.0 as well as a specific migration approach. The secure, robust and real-time communication solutions for the manufacturing industry use key technologies from the areas of 5G, multi-access edge computing (MEC), cloud computing, virtualization, industrial monitoring and analytics.

Ansgar Bergmann is particularly proud of the fact that Still not only “simply participated” in this project, but was able to contribute his expertise fully and decisively to the development. “We have put our wealth of experience in the areas of industrial networking and Industry 4.0 to profitable use. We have benefited from the fact that we have already helped shape several industry guidelines in the past on behalf of the Federal Government and the VDMA,” says the Still expert. On the other hand, the Hamburg-based intralogistics company was also able to benefit from its participation in the “IC4F” project. Bergmann: “First of all, we proved to ourselves that we have mastered successful networking in the warehouse and that our approaches work. In addition, we were able to gain a lot of new insights which we will now apply profitably for both sides in the cooperation with our customers”.

On October 22, this work was provisionally concluded. Still invited project partners and internal stakeholders to its headquarters on the Elbe. There, Nokia has also set up a mobile phone campus network, which is necessary for the project implementation and will serve as a pioneer for new communication technologies such as 5G. The groundbreaking results of the project work were then presented in several live demonstrations. A live demonstration (“Use Case Truck-to-X Communication”), which was developed mainly by Still, dealt for example with the door control in a factory building. In this use case, both forklift trucks and other factory installations were integrated into a common communication environment. The indoor localization system supplied the position data of the forklifts, which were then processed by various applications of the partners involved in the live demonstration. In this example, the door control was done purely from a virtual world. The door opened automatically as soon as a forklift truck approached. The implementation of this door control was implemented as a so-called management shell. For this purpose, digital twins were generated by the forklift and the gate. In the submodels of the management shell, all physical properties of the forklift and the gate were then permanently available. The virtual model, which controlled the processes, was thus continuously able to compare these data and, for example, to open the gate only if the dimensions of the forklift truck really fit through. In addition, the truck’s drive control is accessed and the driver is warned if things get tight. Door damage as it occurs today would thus be a thing of the past.

All in all, several live demonstrations and a large number of new or extended industrial use cases were shown in Hamburg during the presence event, for example the “Bring your Own Network” approach from Siemens for easier installation of multi-tenant networks in companies or the modern “Certificate Management via the Cloud” from Telekom, which increases both security and convenience in the field of industrial communication. “These proof-of-concept implementations serve to verify the methodology and validate the use cases,” says Ansgar Bergmann. The Still expert is firmly convinced that much of the knowledge and experience gained from the IC4F project will later flow into industrial applications and be of great benefit to Still customers. “With this experience behind us, we are the ideal partner when it comes to industrial 4.0 topics or networking in the warehouse,” Ansgar Bergmann is sure.