Success Case
BASF – LTE private network in a chemical plant
Spain
Chemicals company BASF and telecommunications infrastructure and services operator Cellnex Telecom have signed an alliance to install the first private network based on 5G technology in the Spanish chemical industry. The pilot project will also be one of the first in the Spanish industrial sector.
Cellnex will be responsible for installing and rolling out this 5G network in BASF’s production centre in La Canonja, Tarragona, and will serve as a base for developing various usage cases related to the industrial operations of the plant.
The fifth generation of mobile communications, better known as 5G, will increase data speed and transmission capacity by a factor of ten compared to 4G; it will cut latency —the time it takes to respond to a request— to one millisecond, a tenth of current levels; it will be highly available and reliable, allowing it to be used in critical applications; and it will make it possible to manage up to a million connected devices per square kilometre. In its industrial application, 5G will be a turning point, becoming the basis for the development of Industry 4.0 and IoT (the Internet of Things).
Overall, BASF has identified 5G as one of the key technologies for its digital transformation process. Although connectivity in industry has been a fact since the early 1990s, the leap into this new era will open the door to developing new applications in important fields such as security or operations. This technology will pave the way to the Internet of Things (IoT), the implementation of BigData, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Tarragona will also become one of the first 5G projects launched by the German multinational globally. So far, only Germany, Belgium and China have started similar projects.
Challenges
Test use cases to see the efficiency contributions in day-to-day plant operation.
Solution
5G pilot Network based in LTE Private Network and Edge Computing.
Carles Navarro
_GENERAL DIRECTOR BASF
Benjamin Hepfer
_PRODUCTION CENTER DIRECTOR BASF