The roll out of 5G has been mainly characterized by its distinct support for vertical industries, especially manufacturing. Leveraging synergies among these two worlds, namely production facilities and network systems, is a fundamental aspect to enable flexibility and economic viability in future factories. This work highlights the potential for intelligent networking and advanced machine learning-based solutions in 5G-and-beyond systems in the context of Industry 4.0 and flexible manufacturing. The intersection thereof allows to create versatile machines and dynamic communication networks that can adapt to changes in the manufacturing process, factory layout and communication environment, supporting real-time interaction between humans, machines, and systems. We present a vision and corresponding framework by introducing the network-aware and production-aware principles, outlining results achieved in this context and summarizing them into three key use cases. Finally, we discuss a selection of remaining open challenges in private networks as well as give an outlook on future 6G research directions.

翻译：5G的部署主要以其对垂直行业（特别是制造业）的独特支持为特征。利用这两个领域（即生产设施与网络系统）之间的协同效应，是实现未来工厂灵活性与经济可行性的关键。本文重点阐述了在工业4.0及柔性制造背景下，5G及未来系统中智能网络与先进机器学习解决方案的潜力。两者的交叉使得能够构建多功能机器和动态通信网络，以适应制造流程、工厂布局及通信环境的变化，支持人、机器与系统之间的实时交互。我们提出了一种愿景与相应框架，引入了“网络感知”与“生产感知”原则，概述了在此背景下取得的成果，并将其总结为三个关键用例。最后，我们讨论了私有网络中尚存的一系列开放挑战，并对未来6G研究方向进行了展望。