Airbus taps Ericsson for smart factory network

Airbus has partnered with Ericsson to deploy a private 5G network that will power its smart factory operations.

The challenge for Airbus was familiar for many large manufacturers: how to connect every person, machine, and vehicle. A private 5G network is now the beating heart of Airbus’ Hamburg factory aiming to make operations better, faster, and smarter. With a similar network now taking root in Toulouse, this is the new blueprint for modern aerospace manufacturing.

For the technician on the assembly line, this provides the freedom to walk the length of a wing with augmented reality glasses overlaying every rivet and cable path in perfect clarity, with no fear of a dropped connection. It’s the smart tool in their hand reporting its torque data back to the central system in an instant, creating a perfect digital record of the aircraft’s birth. It’s the collaborative robot that can be redeployed to a new task in minutes, not hours, because it isn’t tethered to a physical data port.

Getting here required bridging two very different worlds. The understandably safety-obsessed culture of aerospace had to mesh with the world of telecoms. The result is a network that is both robust and quick to deploy.

Ericsson’s private 5G network platform allowed the teams to get Airbus’ Hamburg smart factory online far faster than anyone anticipated, a test for a plan that is set to span the globe. From these first sites in Germany and France, the ambition is to create a unified standard across Airbus’ key locations in Spain, the UK, and eventually, North America.

Hakim Achouri, 5G expert at Airbus, said “Our objective is to migrate all our industrial networks towards 5G to ensure unified, ultra-reliable connectivity from the operator’s workstation to the aircraft cabin.

“This deployment accelerates projects involving 3D simulation, augmented reality, improved traceability for parts, and predictive maintenance for our assets. The standardisation and scalability made possible by this architecture allow us to replicate the solution easily across further sites in Europe and worldwide.”

For Ericsson, the Airbus smart factory shows how private 5G networks can transform demanding environments.

Manish Tiwari, Head of Enterprise 5G, Enterprise Wireless Solutions at Ericsson, commented: “Our collaboration with Airbus embodies the alliance between technological innovation and industrial excellence. Ericsson is proud to support Airbus’ digitalisation ambitions through Ericsson Private 5G, offering best-in-class, secure connectivity at scale.” 

What this partnership is truly building is a living laboratory for the future of industry. The teams are already looking over the horizon, collaborating on what comes next: fully connected aircraft cabins for passengers, the dawn of 6G, and even using satellite networks to connect operations in the most remote locations.

If Airbus can deploy a private 5G network to create a smart factory relatively quickly within the almost incomprehensible scale of one of its assembly hangars, it demonstrates the benefits to manufacturers of all sizes.

Airbus isn’t just building planes here; it’s building a new way of making things, laying a foundation that will shape the future of manufacturing long after these aircraft have taken to the skies.

See also: Huawei unveils AI Fabric 2.0 and Wi-Fi 7 upgrades at network summit

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Tags: 5G, airbus, connectivity, ericsson, Iot, m2m, manufacturing, networks, private 5g, smart factory, telecoms, vendors