Chemical manufacturers and similar industries around the world are seeking ways to enhance efficiency and ensure worker collaboration and safety throughout their facilities. The adoption of digitalization and Industry 4.0 technologies offer promising solutions to help them achieve these goals. To fully benefit from Industry 4.0, plants require end-to-end connectivity. This will open the door for chemical manufacturers and other organizations to adopt innovations such as digital twins, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), remote maintenance and advanced group communication. If you want to understand the rich potential enabled by advanced group communication, read on.

In campus and industrial communications, the adoption of Industry 4.0 and digitalization are accelerating the move from traditional Land Mobile Radio (LMR) to modern wireless technologies. 4.9G/LTE and 5G connectivity gives business-critical communications users access to more advanced push-to-x capabilities, beyond only voice and text.

The switch to private wireless

By adopting a reliable, robust 4.9G/LTE or 5G private wireless connectivity platform you can take advantage of rich push-to-x communications along with a host of other compelling Industry 4.0 use cases that will help you achieve your business goals. Video will provide teams with far greater situational and operational awareness than is possible using just voice. If you are one of the organizations that remain reliant on narrowband technologies with only limited data capabilities, you will be missing out. By moving beyond voice to enable push-to-x, voice, video and data communications between workers you can equip them to improve collaboration, be more productive and better protected.

Through rich push-to-x communication your team leaders can share instructions with all workers at the start of a shift, at the push of a button – and if work schedules change, you can refocus their attention more quickly. Maintenance teams can send video and operational data to off-site experts for greater insight into equipment issues. And, in an emergency, workers can provide greater context about the situation at hand to their teammates in the area.

So, how do you get started? Often this begins by connecting your workers and equipping them with ruggedized industrial handhelds that allow them to access and use data and video in the same way that we use our personal smartphones.

How then, do you turn those ruggedized handhelds into the push-to-x devices that your teams are so familiar with?

Get the app

Nokia Team Comms is a voice, video and messaging application that will breathe new life into your operations. The first step is to add the capability of Nokia Team Comms to your network by downloading the application from the Nokia Industrial Application Catalog to your Nokia MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) server that comes as standard with Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) private wireless solution or can be added to Nokia Modular Private Wireless (MPW) solution too. This adds the Nokia Team Comms capability to your campus network. Your users can then download the app to their devices (any Android 10 or later) from Google Play Store and begin accessing its capabilities. If there’s a need to push the app for several users at once, this can be done easily via Nokia Industrial device management.

As a cost-effective, pay as you grow and 3GPP-aligned application, Nokia Team Comms functions within your private wireless network, and even without internet connectivity. It comes with a web interface that allows the administrator to easily create user accounts and groups and add group members. You can scale the size of groups as your needs dictate. Users can belong to one or more groups and leave when they want to. A dedicated priority call functionality overrides all other ongoing communication. Because all communications are recorded, users and plant managers can replay and revisit voice and video calls, as well as text messages for full traceability. To protect your privacy, since Team Comms runs on MXIE, all data remains on-premise – an optimal solution for maximum security and data sovereignty.

Nokia Industrial devices come with dedicated PTT and SOS buttons that can be configured for the Nokia Team Comms application to extend its usability. In addition, Nokia Industrial device accessories, such as ruggedized remote speaker microphones, can also be used with Nokia Team Comms. Users can benefit from the ergonomic and robust design of the remote speaker microphone and communicate with others even when wearing bulky protective gloves.

New mission-critical features and capabilities needed

We’ve been listening to our existing Nokia Team Comms customers who told us that they wanted even more from the app. Consequently, we will be introducing the following new features soon:

• A dispatcher capability will allow dispatchers, such as team leaders and plant managers to see which users are online and communicate with them via voice, data and video, while those in the field can share video, images and more directly with the dispatcher to give them a better understanding of any situation. The dispatcher can also listen to, or view user calls in ambient mode – providing an extra set of eyes or ears for workers in a hazardous situation to enhance their protection without disturbing or interrupting their flow.
• Private wireless quality of service (QoS) will allow enterprises to set the right priority for Nokia Team Comms’ traffic versus other private wireless traffic types (e.g. non-critical environmental sensors), and give higher priority for key workers (e.g. emergency teams).
• Support for guaranteed bit rate (GBR) will help further improve the voice and video quality. This allows optimal utilization of resources, e.g. it allows priority calls to go through with higher QCI (QoS Class Identifier) that results in better response time.
• Full duplex calls between two users will allow them to conduct a conversation without needing to push and release a button to switch between voice transmit and receive modes.
• When messaging, users will be able to attach files, allowing, for example a maintenance worker to share a manual or image for greater context.
• Last but not least, Apple device users will also be able to start using Nokia Team Comms.

When using Nokia Team Comms there are no complications and no patchwork of systems as it runs on the same private wireless network than your other use cases leverage, and you get streamlined communication allowing you to equip your workforce to be more productive and better protected.

Increase productivity and worker safety on your campus with Nokia Team Comms.