Smart factories: the biggest industrial automation issue of 2019
Interest in new technologies such as CPS and MEC, as well as smart city platforms.
Standardization work is in progress, including the OPC-UA protocol and TSN standards.


2019 was a year of intense interest in automated infrastructure, particularly smart factories, an industrial infrastructure.

Last June, the government announced the "Manufacturing Renaissance Vision and Strategy," aimed at transforming Korea into one of the world's top four manufacturing powerhouses. To achieve this vision, the government plans to deploy 30,000 smart factories for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by 2022 and establish 20 smart industrial complexes by 2030.

Furthermore, the government has decided to fully promote AI-based industrial intelligence across the manufacturing industry, including by establishing 2,000 AI factories by 2030 and enacting the "Special Act on Manufacturing Innovation." Furthermore, the government has established a policy to build a data center that accumulates smart factory data to support AI-based services and foster smart manufacturing innovation supply industries, including core software, robots, sensors, and equipment used in smart factories.

Along with policy support, the industry is also focusing on developing and adopting new technologies like CPS and MEC, and is diligently establishing standards that enhance IoT connectivity, such as the OPC-UA protocol and the TSN standard. Efforts to apply this infrastructure beyond factories to cities are also on the rise. In this context, e4ds News has selected five must-read articles before 2019 ends.
The domestic manufacturing industry is facing a decline in competitiveness compared to developing countries due to a decline in the working-age population resulting from a declining birth rate and rising labor costs. To secure manufacturing competitiveness amidst these structural changes, the government is expanding support policies. Manufacturing companies are also accelerating the adoption of smart factories to secure productivity and enhance efficiency.

The smart factory concept encompasses factory automation, which replaces human labor with machines, but it's not all there is to it. Key elements include digitization, which involves accumulating sensors, cutting-edge processes, and data; network connectivity through the Internet of Things; and smart manufacturing, which analyzes collected data to identify problems and make decisions.

According to Capgemini Consulting, the economic impact generated by the adoption of smart factories is expected to reach up to $1.5 trillion globally over the five-year period from 2018 to 2022. Considering that the projected increase in global GDP over the same period is approximately $18.4 trillion, $1.5 trillion represents approximately 8%. The industry predicts that the smart factory market in Korea will grow at an average annual rate of 11.2% until 2020, reaching a size of $7.83 billion by 2020.


Smart manufacturing is manufacturing that utilizes ICT, and the production system that implements this is the smart factory. A smart factory integrates various ICTs into production sites, making individual facilities and processes intelligent and networked. Connected factories share all production information in real time and utilize this information to operate efficiently and autonomously.

The primary goal of a smart factory is efficient, flexible, autonomous, intelligent design and operation. A key concept applied to achieve this is cyber-physical systems (CPS), which actively and autonomously perform perception, judgment, and action. CPS are computer-based components and systems that connect to and utilize digital models of the cyber world.

CPS applies IIoT technology to connect and monitor all entities—products, processes, equipment, and factories—across the entire production process. It also manages, refines, and analyzes the collected manufacturing big data. Through real-time synchronization, it establishes and intelligently utilizes a cyber model that matches the on-site situation. This can be said to be a core technology of smart factories that aim to achieve autonomous and proactive design and operation optimization.


As populations concentrate in cities, various social and environmental problems arise. A smart city is a model that integrates new technologies like ICT and big data into cities to address various urban issues and improve quality of life. More recently, the city is moving towards a city platform, a space where diverse innovative technologies can be implemented and integrated with urban infrastructure.

In 2017, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport decided to replace the outdated term "ubiquitous," renaming the Ubiquitous City Act the Smart City Act. What differentiates a smart city from a U-city is that instead of a U-city control center, a smart city platform is the underlying system.

Daegu Suseong Alpha City completed 13 services across five smart city areas in August 2019 and completed stability and effectiveness verification. Daegu Urban Development Corporation plans to gradually transform existing urban areas into smart cities, while fully applying smart technologies to new development sites from the planning stage.


With the commercialization of 5G network services, the need for rapid processing of large amounts of data is increasing. However, cloud computing alone has limitations in processing the massive amounts of data concentrated in data centers. Consequently, a movement to process data at its source has begun.

MEC technology is a distributed cloud technology that provides customized services based on a fast and stable communication environment physically close to wireless base stations. MEC can improve service quality by minimizing congestion in mobile core networks of telecommunications operators and reducing network expansion costs. It also offers service providers the opportunity to expand their business by creating new local services.

MEC technology has great potential for application in a wide range of fields, including not only smart factories but also smart cities, autonomous vehicles, AI, and VR/AR. Therefore, a spirit of challenge to create new business models is becoming increasingly necessary, and institutional support to support this is also needed.


Manufacturing is the foundation of Korea's industry and economy. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution looming, voices everywhere are calling for smart manufacturing to boost productivity. The term "smart," which has been used everywhere, has even been applied to factories, leading to the emergence of the term "smart factory," which has quickly become widespread.

Smart factories are a more advanced concept than factory automation. Factory automation, where each process is automated and optimized, collects data individually. In contrast, smart factories are data-connected. Therefore, once data is collected, it can be linked.

So, how can we connect data generated across numerous nodes? OPC-UA is a vendor-independent communication protocol for industrial automation applications. This protocol is flexible and completely independent. Therefore, it is considered an ideal communication protocol for implementing Industry 4.0.