John Deere, founded in 1837, is best known for manufacturing heavy machinery for agriculture, construction and forestry. The company has evolved from manufacturing steel plows to selling smart farming systems and breaking ground on the development of fully autonomous tractors.
While the term 5G has for years been familiar to anyone that uses smartphones, tablets and other consumer electronics, 5G technology is still finding its place in the manufacturing world. At its Waterloo Works plant in Waterloo, Iowa, John Deere has set a gold standard for how manufacturers can harvest the potential of private cellular networks to enhance manufacturing.
The highly networked plant generates millions of data points every day, from registering the position of tools on the shop floor and recording their performance, to analyzing product test results and recording safety step compliance for automated guided vehicles (AGVs).
Wired ethernet, a tried-and-true networking technology on plant floors for decades, presents serious challenges for manufacturers that want to remain flexible in their shop floor layouts. Uninstalling and reinstalling cables takes time.
WiFi, or wireless internet, provides one solution to maintain connectivity without depending on wires, but requires the installation of physical nodes, “hotspots,” where devices can access the network. In manufacturing, WiFi is susceptible to interference from machines on the floor, however, which means installing an increasing number of hotspots across the plant as the size of the network increases.
5G technology, the third option, offers higher network capacity with smaller infrastructure requirements and less vulnerability to the same interference. Manufacturers that want to take advantage of private 5G networks commonly depend on vendors like Bosch-Rexroth, Rockwell Automation and Siemens to run their 5G networks.
John Deere, on the other hand, developed the internal expertise to manage its 5G system without dependence on any other company.
For this first episode of Smart Manufacturers, I toured Waterloo Works and spoke with Jason Wallin, chief architect of the plant’s 5G network, about why Deere chose 5G, how it takes advantage of the technology, and how to measure the success of private cellular.
—Dennis Scimeca
