  Two main trends characterize today's communication landscape and are finding
their way into industrial facilities: the rollout of 5G with its distinct
support for vertical industries and the increasing success of machine learning
(ML). The combination of those two technologies open the doors to many exciting
industrial applications and its impact is expected to rapidly increase in the
coming years, given the abundant data growth and the availability of powerful
edge computers in production facilities. Unlike most previous work that has
considered the application of 5G and ML in industrial environment separately,
this paper highlights the potential and synergies that result from combining
them. The overall vision presented here generates from the KICK project, a
collaboration of several partners from the manufacturing and communication
industry as well as research institutes. This unprecedented blend of 5G and ML
expertise creates a unique perspective on ML-supported industrial
communications and their role in facilitating industrial automation. The paper
identifies key open industrial challenges that are grouped into four use cases:
wireless connectivity and edge-cloud integration, flexibility in network
reconfiguration, dynamicity of heterogeneous network services, and mobility of
robots and vehicles. Moreover, the paper provides insights into the advantages
of ML-based industrial communications and discusses current challenges of data
acquisition in real systems.
