Singtel, Hyundai Motor to develop 5G-based manufacturing facility

  • To be leading facility for development of a metaverse manufacturing 
  • Singtel’s 5G solutions to enable quality control in operations

Lim Seng Kong (right), managing director, Singtel Enterprise Business and Mr Hong Bum Jung, CEO of HMGICSSingtel has signed an agreement with Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) to deploy Singtel’s 5G infrastructure network solutions at its Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre in Singapore (HMGICS), which includes an electric vehicle production facility. 

In a joint statement, the companies said the HMGICS is the first of its kind in the world and will leverage Singtel’s 5G campus network with mobile edge core solutions that will provide uninterrupted high-speed connectivity and massive bandwidth. 

This will enhance HMGICS’s high-precision quality control in manufacturing operations, they added.

HMGICS is the HMG’s open innovation hub for research and development in advanced mobility ecosystems with the aim of revolutionising the future mobility value chain.

Apart from introducing smart mobility solutions in areas such as electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and new forms of mobility products and services in Singapore, the HMGICS will also serve as a testbed for human-centred intelligent manufacturing and verification of Industry 4.0 technologies, HMG said.

Lim Seng Kong, managing director, Singtel enterprise business, said Singtel’s 5G network and MEC solutions will overcome the performance limitations of WiFi to deliver the promise of digital twins and eventually metaverse for advanced manufacturing operations. 

“With innovation from Hyundai and enablement from our 5G solutions, we are looking at a new concept of manufacturing where the station comes to the cell, unlocking opportunities for hyper-customisation and other novel applications,” he said.

“Together, we are paving the way for Singapore to be the centre for Smart Manufacturing in the region,” said Lim.

Singtel said its Paragon is an all-in-one platform for 5G networks, edge computing management and services orchestration, will enable the factory to manage and analyse the manufacturing process and performance of the networks, thus allowing real-time monitoring and feedback. 

Paragon will also support Hyundai’s new capability that allows customers to personalise their chosen vehicles and watch their cars being manufactured live via their smart devices, it said.

Once ready, the vehicles will be transported by specially designed autonomous guided vehicles to the Centre’s 620-metre-long Sky Track where customers can test drive them, it added.

Hong Bum Jung, chief executive officer of HMGICS, said, “Through this partnership, HMGICS will feature the Hyundai Motor Group’s first deployment of a 5G network in vehicle manufacturing, leveraging 5G for a cloud-based centralised mobile robot management solution.

“We believe that Singtel’s 5G solution will not only redefine the manufacturing process, but the partnership will realise Hyundai’s vision of becoming the first mobility innovator to build a meta-factory concept, a digital-twin of an actual factory, supported by a metaverse platform,” he said.

“The game-changing meta-factory will enable us to test-run a factory virtually, in order to calculate the optimised plant operation and enable plant managers to solve problems without having to physically visit the plant,” Hong said.

Singtel said its 5G mobility network enables Hyundai to deliver on its ‘metamobility’ concept, which refers to going beyond physical movements through robotics and into the metaverse to affect change in the real world, thus  expanding the use of robots as a medium between the real and virtual worlds. 

Deployment of these solutions is currently underway and expected to be completed by Q4 2022.

The partnership also includes continued support for another five years thereafter, Singtel said.

 

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