5G in manufacturing: a literature review and future research

5G in Logistics 4.0: potential applications and challenges

“…In the last years, the advances in the development of Information and Communication Technologies and tools for industry promoted the transition from traditional manufacturing and logistics systems to Industry 4.0 and Logistics 4.0. Such scenarios require the interconnection of equipment, materials, vehicles, tools, and workers, and generally have strong requirements for large-scale connection and real-time communication [5]. In particular, Logistics 4.0 relies on digital technologies such as the Internet of Things, Cyber-physical systems, Big data-based systems and Cloud-based systems to efficiently fulfil the demanding customers' requirements in terms of delivery dates and lead times [6].…”

“…Regarding warehousing, only two papers in the corpus deal with the topic, and both refer to the possible use of drones to perform warehouse inventory activities: 5G networks, in facts, allow drones to travel longer distances N. of papers/Year without loosing the signal [18,19]. On the other hand, as far as material handling is concerned, excluding two literature reviews that refer to the uses of 5G in internal logistics (and specifically on material handling) [5,20], the two main topics discussed are autonomous guided vehicles [21][22][23][24] and "vehicles-to-everything" [25], which is a concept similar to the internet of things but related to the connection of vehicles (both traditionally and autonomously driven) to other elements (e.g., machinery, racking, portals) in the factory. For external logistics, on the other hand, the topics covered are supply chains, transportation, last-mile delivery and smart cities (Fig.…”

“…Smart sensors and RFID are employed in internal and external logistics to collect the most relevant parameters, such as temperature or humidity, that must be monitored to ensure the quality of goods during the storage and transportation phases [27,28]. IoT is cited in almost all the papers as one of the pillars of Logistics 4.0 that can benefit the most from the 5G technology that enables massive, reliable and real-time data transmission from multiple devices, as required by the IoT manufacturing networks [5]. Embedded Microprocessors and Edge Computing are cited as promising technologies to perform efficient datapreprocessing combined to 5G: the first through the filtering of relevant information for the specific application and the latter through a decentralized computational model in which data, particularly critical from the most latencysensitive applications, are analyzed directly where they are detected [33,37].…”

“…First applications have been envisioned and tested in a few academic laboratories and industrial companies, but we are still far from worldwide adoption of the 5G networks. Next to the potential of optimizing manufacturing and logistics processes, currently, some challenges remain open and prevent companies from investing in 5G [5]. Further investigation at academic and managerial levels is required to allow a better acceptance and adoption of the technology in the industrial context.…”

“…Further investigation at academic and managerial levels is required to allow a better acceptance and adoption of the technology in the industrial context. Indeed, few contributions systematically assessing the potential application of 5G in manufacturing context, such as [5], can be found. Nevertheless, specific in-depth analysis and systematic reviews of the literature about the relationships between 5G and industrial logistics application are still missing.…”