- Ericsson is building massive MIMO radios and other products at its Texas factory
- These products are shipped to operators all throughout North and South America
- AI is already an integral part of the manufacturing process at Ericsson's factory
LEWISVILLE, TEXAS — Even though Ericsson executives indicated on their most recent earnings call that the company plans to put less focus on its U.S. wireless business, the Swedish vendor’s manufacturing plant in Lewisville, Texas, is humming along at full speed.
On its Q1 earnings call, Ericsson President and CEO Börje Ekholm told investors, “I think North America always will be important. From a mix point of view, it will be less important going forward.”
But that isn’t stopping the company from cranking out circuit boards and assembling high-capacity radios as fast as it can at its 5G USA Smart Factory. And these radios aren’t just for American wireless operators. They’re shipped to mobile carriers all throughout North and South America.
This week, Fierce Network editors got a personal tour of Ericsson’s six-year-old Lewisville factory. The building, which encompasses about 300,000 square feet, includes a warehouse, offices and an assembly line that runs 24x7.
Matt Hume, the production manager for the factory, said in the last couple of years, the facility has increased its product capabilities “immensely.” It keeps a portfolio of about a dozen types of products with about 20 unique circuit boards within those products.
Similar to a tour that Ericsson gave media and analysts in 2024, the Fierce editors were able to see the full assembly-line process where a type of massive MIMO radio was being built.
The factory keeps about 2,000 unique components to create its circuit boards, including chips, resistors and capacitors, to name just a few. This enables Ericsson to manufacture customized radios for myriad frequency variants.
The type of circuit boards for the massive MIMO radio being assembled during the Fierce tour is one of the largest circuit boards in the world. “This is about as big of a board as you will see. This board contains 18,500 components, which is a lot, obviously,” Hume said.
He said the aerospace and satellite industries also uses large circuit boards, but they have far fewer components.
It would be possible for Ericsson to use multiple circuit boards for some of its radios, rather than building such as massive circuit board. However, connecting multiple circuit boards together would require sacrifices in power and spectrum efficiencies. “Spectral efficiency is a really big deal,” said Hume. “There's only a limited amount of spectrum, and the more information you can put in the spectrum that exists, the better.”
Using AI at the factory
Ericsson is already using AI quite a bit at its 5G smart factory.
For instance, at one point on the assembly line, a robotic arm places a type of super glue on top of the circuit board in anticipation of placing components. In the past, the sequence of steps taken by this robotic arm was determined by humans. But Ericsson decided to run the procedure through AI to see if the process could be further optimized. Josh Cave, manager of data and analytics for the factory, said: “We found that for one of our products, we were able to achieve a 15% reduction in the amount of time that this machine takes to complete its sequence of dispenses.”
While a 15% increase in efficiency at one point on the assembly line may not sound like a lot, it’s important to keep things moving and not allow bottlenecks on the line.
Another place where the factory uses AI is for a robotic storage and retrieval system (RSRS). Ericsson has built a round enclosure where a robot places radios that are finished being assembled or are waiting for repairs. “It's been a great way for us to free up some floor space and keep our inventory more systematically controlled,” Hume said.
But even though Ericsson uses AI for some parts of its factory, there are still places where humans have to step in.
For instance, when all the components have been placed on the massive MIMO component board, the board must be carefully placed in an oven by a human. “There's literally about 12,000 components on the board, and they're all wet,” said Hume. “And you can’t tip it the wrong way. Until you can entrust a robot, you need a person.”
Ericsson has been working to train a robot to do the task, but robots don’t have fine-tuned gripping and balancing capabilities. Hume said, “It has been a long journey. It's literally easier to teach people.”