Hannover Messe Week - Day 1 - Sander Rotmensen

I'm gonna—

Ready?

I'm 90% gonna forget Ungar.

And we're live. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Um, that was very fun music, Carol. Thank you very much for that selection. It's getting me energized. We are here with a special edition of the Industry 4.0 Club on LinkedIn Live. All week, we're going to be teaming up with IIoT World to bring you news and perspectives from Hannover Messe. And thank you for taking time out of your busy day to join us here on LinkedIn. So I'm Grace Donovan. I am one of your co-hosts today. I'm a co-founder of the Industry 4.0 Club, and while I'm not hosting conversations, I work connecting people, processes, and machines with Andonics, which connects— is a connected worker technology company. And Carol and Lucien, I'd love to hear a little bit about yourselves so we can meet all of our co-hosts, and then we will introduce Sander.

Hi, thanks, Grace. Yes, I'm Carol Michelin. I'm a Industry 4.0 Club co-founder, and when I'm not busy supporting the club, I'm a content marketing specialist at Raven AI, and I'm based here in Toronto, Canada. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Lucian, welcome.

Thanks everybody for tuning in. I'm Lucian Fogoros. I'm the co-founder of IoT World and happy to be here. I'm in Hannover Messe and Exciting few days here. Thank you.

Coming at us live. All right. We are, Carol and I are across the pond in the US and Canada. But today, as Lucien mentioned, Sander is joining us live from Hannover Messe. Sander has worked with Siemens for 17 years. He is the Director of Industrial Wireless Communication based in Nuremberg, Germany. Earlier in his career with Siemens, he did spend some time this side of the pond in Canada before returning to Europe. And he's currently raising the world's youngest experts in wireless which really speaks to his impressive ability to break down technical know-how into layman's terms. Siemens has really been at the forefront of 5G, and we're so thrilled to have Sander with us today. If you have any questions for Sander throughout the conversation, please put them in the chat and we will pin your questions. But without further ado, Sander, welcome to the stage.

Thank you for having me and plugging in me pushing 5G and Wi-Fi 6 on my daughter.

Yes.

Well, I figure, you know, if a 6-year-old can kind of grasp these concepts, like you're doing something right. something really well to communicate that. And this is still a technology that a lot of us are learning about. So that's fantastic. So to kind of start off, I know you've been really busy today kind of with Siemens, you know, discussing 5G, but there's, you know, we talk a lot about the speculation and the potential for 5G technology. For people like consumers, you know, on our cell phones, it's a very nominal change from 4G to 5G, but for industrial applications, 5G was gonna be very disruptive. and is already, you know, proving that. So can you tell us what will be some of the changes we can expect and where are we today on the journey towards making like 5G a firm reality?

Yeah, I think I can start with what we say all the time. So we believe it will change the way we manufacture products, maintain our factories. And there was one other thing, but it's like we believe it has the potential to change literally everything in the factory because for the first time ever, a wireless technology like a cellular technology was developed keeping industrial requirements in mind. And so by saying that, I mean normally we take a technology which is there and try to use it for industrial benefits. Sometimes we have add-ons like PROFINET or OPC UA, but now really the core technology, the wireless technology, was developed by the 3GPP. And in 2016, we joined, for example, the 3GPP, making sure the requirements from The shop floors from ourselves, our own factories, as well as those from our customers were part of the standardization. And by doing that, we were really able to create a technology which answers those demands.

Yeah, I think one of the things that really helped me kind of dimension the change from 4G to 5G, again, someone who mostly just uses wireless devices on cell phones and my laptop, was that it has 10x the connectivity power that the 4G network has. Is that correct?

So yeah, so first of all, there is the possibility to connect 1 million devices per square kilometer, which is 10 times more as with 4G, of course. But also it has a bandwidth which is 10 to 20 times higher as what we had with 4G as well as a capability. So that is, of course, very exciting. And yeah, I'm a big smartphone user, so I know what you speak about. Instantly online, we are streaming this here wireless probably as well. So That is something we, of course, need as a consumer, but that is like more an evolution. And I think what the big thing is in 5G, an industry that is a revolution. For the first time ever, we are able to set up, for example, private wireless networks based on a mobile wireless network standard, and it's standardized. It's not something you just try because it's possible. No, this is going to be standardized all over the place because it's part of the standardization.

Could you walk us through a little bit of that standardization? So what makes it really easy to adopt this technology and that it is so standardized across providers?

Yeah, so standardized across providers, that we do already since years. We had 2G, we had 3G, and so we did text messaging. And then we in industry took the text messaging to have machines communicating with us. I always say, like, in the Netherlands where I'm from, We had the bridges controlled by PLCs. They could all of a sudden text us when something was happening. Then the bridge wader could go over and maintain it himself and put on his wooden shoes, jumped on the bike, drove over. And then with 3G, he didn't even have to leave because he could remote control those PLCs. And with 4G, we had live video. That's all a public network. But with 5G now having standardized private networks, it's possible to really set up a private network with an own 5G core. A central unit, a distributed unit, and a radio unit. And if you're here in Hanover, you can see them hanging on the ceiling. And if you can't find them yourself, just come over, find me, and then we'll look for them together. And with those, you have a private network which you can do whatever you want with. So you're not depending on something else, on someone else. So you have the control over the network as an end user. And this is what is now standardized. So also end devices are available to connect to private networks. They're becoming more and more available. So we have 2 in our portfolio, 2 routers, ScanLink MUM856-1 and an MUM853-1. So it's starting and it's getting really exciting. I'm excited, and for the first time here in Hannover, we're actually showing it live.

Yeah, that's amazing. Carol, over to you.

Yes, Sander, to avoid any confusions, I think some companies have the assumption that with the 5G that it's an all-or-nothing approach. And in the context of the pillars of 5G reliability, latency, and availability, can you use that to kind of dispel any ideas that companies have to go all in when it comes to 5G?

Yeah, so just looking at the triangle, so we now spoke already about the high bandwidth, 10 to 20 times higher. So Let's say it's up to 20 gigabits per second. Then at the same time, we look at the high number of devices, the 1 million per square kilometer, which is just 1 per square meter. So if you look at it simpler, it's not even that much, but it's still a lot. And it fits, for example, to process automation. But then we have also the other corner of the triangle, which is low latency and reliability, where we speak about round-trip delay times of 10 milliseconds, making sure we can do real-time communication wirelessly. So that is very exciting as well. Where we need to be careful with is that people think they can have everything. You know, it's like you see it and you feel like a kid in a candy store and you think, oh, I want one of everything. No, you really need to pinpoint your network. So if you look, for example, at a private network in a process automation plant, you will probably go to that left corner with that massive wireless sensor network having many devices connected. But if you look at a discrete manufacturing plant, for example, automotive plants, you probably want to make sure you have that ultra reliability combined with that low latency. You go more in the right corner. So that's why you need to pinpoint your network at. And then also you need to think about what am I going to do with the spectrum I have? Because when we talk about spectrum here in Germany, we have 100 MHz available. You need to utilize that in the right way. So you cannot just say like, oh, I'm going to do a 5G network and I'm going to see what is going on with it. I really need to figure out what are my biggest challenges, which are mission critical, which am I going to put on my private 5G network, and which one I could maybe still solve with wireless LAN, which is still out there and will continue to be there for years to come because it has proven to be a great technology for the last 20 years as well.

What uses do you see for the dynamic work environment, how the industrial 5G applications are used within the industrial setting?

So I think if we look at today's manufacturing world, that's always production lines. I think in the future, 5G will really make that more dynamic because we talk— we sometimes dub this the flexible factory of tomorrow or autonomous production. Everything is moving around. You see showcases where you have an AMR with a robot arm on it installing something while something is on an overhead monorail, like we're showcasing here in Hanover, for example. Or we have multiple AGVs driving in the same direction. So we have that kind of things. And then we also need to look at the workforce because there's still people on the floor as well, and we need to make sure that it's safe. And it's also where 5G comes into the game. Something happens, an emergency stop is pulled, all the devices around it need to act because that is safety where we talk about safety of the worker. And then of course, you have things like the augmented worker. So you maybe have a technician somewhere on site in the world and they encounter an issue and they need support from experts. And yeah, in the past you grabbed the phone, 1G. Can you help me? I've got this challenge. If you had reception at all. With 2G, you might have sent a text message. With 3G, so we get the whole story. again, but I think you get the picture. And nowadays, maybe you can just take a tablet, point it with the camera on the dashboard where you have it, and then maybe the super expert inside the headquarters says like, hey, I'll draw something on your screen, you need to flip this switch, and they know exactly what needs to happen. And this is also where we see 5G really changing the way we maintain factories.

Yeah, I think, you know, does this also imply, I think, you know, moving robots out of cages because they are going to have that, you know, response time necessary to protect that user safety and that worker safety and seeing like a much more collaborative factory?

Definitely.

You already see that today with autonomous machines, AMRs, mobile robots. You already see them like outside in between the people today, but they have lots of intelligence still on board. So where 5G could maybe play a role in a distant future, so we're talking now 3 to 5 years out there when Release 16, 17, maybe even 18 is releasing, we could maybe take some of that intelligence outside of the AMR, put it in a central controller, and then have one central controller manage more robots at the same time. Also making cobots possible. So cobot is a cooperating robot, for example, because you have that one central controlling everything at the same time.

It's really interesting, I think. And there's so much variability too in folks' like adoption paths towards 5G. I only recently saw my first like cobot working on the floor. It was very, very exciting, but they were still very much within a cage. So I think, you know, there is a lot of variety of what's out there today. And so that's really interesting. And kind of speaking of that variety and kind of where different companies find themselves on the adoption path to like 5G, how is Siemens helping industrial customers adopt 5G technology?

Well, so I wish I could walk to you to this, to the booth right now, but I know a little bit away because of the noise. But so what are we actually doing? So we are currently developing, besides our user end devices which are already out there on the market, we are currently developing our own private 5G infrastructure. And by our own, I mean the one we're going to bring to the customers. So we are an OT supplier stepping into the 5G world, creating an infrastructure. We have our own core, we have our own radio access network, and we are bringing that to customers somewhere in 2023. But we're doing something more as well because we believe that there is many— or we know there is companies now testing and playing. I call it playing all the time with 5G. They have like this small test applications which are near to production but not really into production, or it's redundant to a working wireless LAN system or another system. But what we have done is making sure not only large corporations have this possibility. Together with the Deutsche Messe here in Hanover, we have equipped Hall 9 with a prototype of our currently under development product, which is actually working here even between the trade shows. We keep it here, and then in between trade shows, customers all sizes could reach out to the Deutsche Messe, or if they need contact, they can contact me and I can relay that information. To set up their application here in Hall 9, which is, when it's empty, 24,000 square meters in size. I don't have the number in feet, but someone can do the math, I guess.

Thank you.

But it's big enough to drive a car. So we were testing the network while setting up. We were actually driving our car in the hall because we were tired of walking around. And this is where we invite customers to come in. So you don't have to invest in 5G early on. But you can test your solution today already without having to make the big investment. And you just come here and test with 5G for a week or so.

Sounds great. Mike is asking, is it cost-effective for small manufacturers to set up their own private 5G network? So I think that kind of really ties in well with the ability that they have now to test it if they happen to be located nearby.

Yeah, or the application is small, you can put it in a suitcase.

There you go.

That's an excellent question actually, Mike. I think currently where we are at, I think having a small manufacturer setting up a private 5G network just for testing purposes, I think you need to go with one of the testbeds and implement your own application. I think that's currently the way to go. I think within a couple years, 5G will be a bit more price efficient. to name it that way. And for us, it's really the goal to put this in the hands of everyone. There is a reason why in Germany we have actually spent the effort on getting private spectrum for everyone and making it very, very, I would say, almost cheap. Because in Germany, if you own a plant from about 150,000 square meters— and sorry, I don't do the math in feet, but it's large— that's a decent-sized small-medium enterprise company. They can rent spectrum from the government for just about €5,500.

That per year?

10 years.

Okay.

10 years.

Wow.

Okay. If I may interject, thanks for the comment on democratization of the industrial 5G. One of the comments you also made downstairs was you're making it easy for anybody in a shop floor to install Can you comment on that, how you're doing that?

Yes, I can, Lucien. So we have lots of experience with industrial wireless LAN. We've brought wireless LAN to the industry in 2004, and it was easier to set up an access point as it was to set up your home router at that day. Had a big— so I not only teach young people, I also teach my dad back in the days. Yeah, he was playing with this wireless LAN access point at home and it didn't work, and he told me, he's like, hey, Can I, uh, can you do this for me? So I played with it, took me an hour, which was long, and I was already working with wireless LAN for some time. And I brought home a Scalex W, one of our products, and I put it on the shelf. That's 15 minutes, you can do it too. And actually, I had it running, I think when I'm correct, it was 13 or 14 minutes and it was up and running. So we're going to do the same thing with 5G. We're going to make sure that this is fit for OT. So for OT users, because we do not want to create another 5G system which is out there, we really need to make sure we create a system which is able to be understood by industrial users. And this is where we as Siemens have a big legacy. So for decades, we are working with PLC technology, totally integrated automation. And what we really want to achieve is a 5G system which can be understood by literally everyone. So having not 50,000 possibilities to set up software settings, just make it simple. So keep it secure and simple, KISS.

There you go.

Yeah, or a little more, um, the other one I know is keep it simple stupid, right?

Well, uh, the stupidest routers.

I like yours is nicer. Yours is nicer. And, you know, when we were talking kind of in preparation for this, you also mentioned that the, you know, the routers that you are making, the actual hardware is compatible with prior versions of networks, correct? So to making that adoption easiest, you're that adoption journey as easy as possible. Can you speak a little bit about that?

Yeah, so for example, I already named them a couple of times. I'm gonna try to do it without making a mistake again. The Scaleys MUM856-1 and our Scaleys MUM853-1. I always joke it's not the coolest thing about the device, the name, but it's close. It is compatible with 4G and 5G networks. So you could already, if you have, for example, you're living in a country where 3G is sunsetted and you're for the next router to install in your plant for remote service, remote maintenance applications, you could either install a 4G device or you could directly jump on 5G because maybe 5G is not available, but 4G is for sure available if they turn off 3G in your country. And then you can really jump not only in the next generation of networks but already in today's generation of networks. And I think that is really helpful what we do with our customers, making it simple to migrate. And also our devices have similar form factors, so they easily fit in. So you take the old one out, put the new one in, so that really helps migrating or evolving from a legacy standard to the next generation or maybe even the latest generation.

Sander, you already mentioned a little bit about the private network and the 4G, 5G. And Lucien also mentioned that democratization. But I'd like you to talk a little bit more about what the role of the government plays in the ability to set up the private networks, and maybe if there are any disadvantages to it as well.

So the government is definitely playing a big role. So if we look at Germany and we look now back in 2018 when we discussions going on. In 2018, there were discussions going on on how to divide the new C-band spectrum. That is 3.4 to 3.8 GHz in Germany. We had at that time 3 providers. There was 400 MHz available. There was then a 4th provider as well, so it would have been easy to just cut slices from 100 MHz. But now Germany actually understands, the German government understood, That having spectrum available for innovative wireless networks boosts efficiency in industry, makes— gives Germany an advantage based on where do I want to build my next big plant. So you could think about a big plant, if you want to build it in Austria or in my home country, the Netherlands, and there's no spectrum available, but you have something where lots of moving devices would be, maybe Germany could be a good way to go. And I think Germany understood that pretty well, as they have been doing in the past as well, looking at things how to boost industry. So we have allocated spectrum. It's now copied by Brazil, for example. And we now have up to 15 countries in the world already having private spectrum in some sort of way available. And this is growing. So this is really, really important. And we shouldn't— we should stop thinking about the short deals. You know, if you want to sell your spectrum, auction off your spectrum, you could get a lot of money as a government. But I think we are now in here for the long game. And there is, first of all, this €5,500 for 150,000 square meters per 10 years. But there is more than just one plan. So you have this multiple times. And then also you keep the industry in your own country and you're able to do innovative networking, which is also boosting your workforce, your efficiency, and and the economy in those places. And then I think you asked something about disadvantages, right? So disadvantages, if you don't have spectrum, you have a disadvantage from my point of view. So let's make sure all countries in the world hear this, all minister presidents, presidents, private spectrum is the way to go.

All right, thanks very much for that. We just got a question in from Alan. Let me pin this comment here real quick. So in a nutshell, because it was a bit of a long question, how is 5G really affecting the frontline operator? So this is one thing that we touched on earlier about how, you know, 5G will impact people, but beyond, you know, introducing it at the executive level, how do you really bring it down to, you know, benefit individuals? with things like shop floor engagement as well as learning and development efforts. Wow.

Yeah, I'm still reading a little bit of it. Okay, so you can read it so quick. Yeah, so I think in general, having that own private 5G network will There are numerous ways how you could do this. So the operator itself probably doesn't really need to interact with 5G because they're already used to just working with an application with wireless LAN today, and they don't interact with it at all. So I think there is not much change. I think it's definitely the people who maintain the factories, so who actually are responsible for the IT in the factory, the factory IT solutions, for example. They definitely need to get some more education. And this should be tailor-made as well. But I think it's possible because I think we, as we said, KISS, keep it secure and simple. This is one of the ways we need to go about it. We need to make sure it's understandable to everyone. So everyone understands what 5G is and not just a logo on your cell phone, but what it does, how it interacts, and how it works together. So there is different elements, the core, the CU, the DU, the RU. People need to understand their roles. And then also they need to see what the possibilities are. They are tremendous. If you look into the future, we talk about slicing. So you could have a slice for mission-critical applications, you could have a slice for the connected worker and all those kind of things. And I think there's definitely education necessary, but I think it's our goal as a supplier to make it so simple that it's possible to have that done by an OT operator.

Yeah, and I think, you know, especially as operations become increasingly globalized and we have, you know, maybe a plant in Canada as well as a plant in Germany, to being able to connect workers to each other using, you know, 5G technology. And that connectivity can really, you know, ensure that people are connected and you can, you know, learn in real time together, you know, adjusting for the time difference. So there's a lot of possibilities there that I see as well. I spend a lot of time in the connected worker space, so— Oh yeah, so it's exciting.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think that, um, is About wrapping it up for us. We've got some— we had these questions in the chat. We had the 5 questions about 5G, so I'll pass it over to Carol.

Yes, as we close, Xander, I'd like to thank you for taking time to join us today, as well as Lucien from IIoT World. For anyone who's attending Hannover Messe, where can they find you? for the rest of the day today and over the next few days?

So today at 6 o'clock, I think the show is closing, which is about in 4 minutes. But tomorrow I'm early, I'm definitely early at the booth again, hall 9, D49. It's, you cannot miss it. We have the most beautiful backlit LED screen on the backdrop. We have a 5G video wall where I'm probably mostly at with some of my fellow experts, where you can actually get an answer on the question what kind of 5G type you are, a public or a private one, and where you focus on. So just come by the booth, ask for Sander or for one of our other 5G experts, and we're happy to help you.

And Gracie might add something to that. And Carol, thanks for facilitating also Sander for being here. My one question is, as we're pushing this video out to the whole community, 284,000 people around the globe, there are 16 countries that have the spectrum, the rest of them, they're not. Where do they get more education so they can press? If they are in the audience, they want to go to their own politicians, where is the one place you would send them to?

I think a good place to look at is 5G Asia, where we work together with many industry providers. We are one of the founding members. This was founded on the beliefs that we can, as a joint group of industry players, jointly influence the 3GPP easier. So, and we also worked on making 5G more understandable in OT. So that's a good start. And otherwise, reach out to your local Siemens guys and we will help you and hook you up and support you with getting some support for a spectrum lobby in your country, which we are already doing, by the way.

So Thank you for that.

Thank you, Lucien, for that. And this week, this is a reminder that we're hosting rooms together with IoT World to bring you coverage from Hannover Messe. Tomorrow, tune in for our conversation on additive manufacturing, same time, 11:30 Eastern, with Ira Sharp and Jan Pingel. who will be speaking with Kirsten Heuser, also from Siemens. And thank you everyone in the audience today. And if you like conversations like this, connect with us on LinkedIn for updates and notifications. And we wish you a great rest of the day. Thank you.

Thanks everyone for joining.

Thank you.