The adoption of Fifth Generation (5G) technology in industrial enterprises has been slower than expected despite its clear technical advantages, primarily due to the significant initial investment costs and uncertainties surrounding the return on investment (ROI). High costs associated with infrastructure deployment, combined with the complexity of assessing the economic benefits specific to different industries, have made the decision to switch to 5G a complex and cautious one for many companies. This situation is worsened due to the lack of comprehensive techno-economic analyses that could provide clearer insights on the potential ROI of 5G implementation across different industrial scenarios. In this article, we propose a 5G-based centralized control solution for automated mobile robots (AMRs). We provide a techno-economic analysis assessing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of acquiring this solution compared to its no acquisition in an Industry 4.0 environment. A sensitivity analysis is also included for the AMR-based solution identifying the variables with great impact on the TCO. Results show that despite the initial higher upfront costs of an AMR-based approach with respect to human-based approach, it incurs lower operational costs over time, requiring only 2.5 years to become more cost-effective than the human-based one.

中文翻译：

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基于 5G 的自主移动机器人解决方案在工业 4.0 中的经济可行性


尽管第五代 （5G） 技术具有明显的技术优势，但其在工业企业中的采用速度比预期的要慢，这主要是由于巨大的初始投资成本和投资回报率 （ROI） 的不确定性。与基础设施部署相关的高成本，加上评估不同行业特定经济效益的复杂性，使得许多公司转向 5G 的决定变得复杂而谨慎。由于缺乏全面的技术经济分析，无法更清楚地了解不同工业场景中 5G 实施的潜在投资回报率，这种情况会变得更糟。在本文中，我们提出了一种基于 5G 的自动化移动机器人 （AMR） 集中控制解决方案。我们提供技术经济分析，评估在工业 4.0 环境中购买该解决方案与未购买该解决方案相比的总拥有成本 （TCO）。此外，基于 AMR 的解决方案还包括敏感性分析，可识别对 TCO 有重大影响的变量。结果表明，尽管与基于人工的方法相比，基于 AMR 的方法最初的前期成本较高，但随着时间的推移，它的运营成本较低，只需 2.5 年即可变得比基于人工的方法更具成本效益。