[Editor's Note] Industry 4.0 aims to establish a fully automated manufacturing system, enabling information exchange between production equipment and products via the Internet of Things. To move beyond factory automation to data-driven smart manufacturing, interconnection between devices and efficient management of the data generated from this interconnection are essential. Appropriately managing exponentially growing data is crucial, and the industry is increasingly adopting the cloud to store and analyze this rapidly growing volume of industrial data. This approach is driving market expansion, fueled by its advantages of processing speed, ease of management, and cost savings. Meanwhile, we met with Park Han-gu, head of the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team, who is in charge of the domestic smart factory distribution and expansion project, to hear about the team's future smart factory support project policies.





■ Please introduce the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team and tell us about its achievements since its launch.

In 2014, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy established a private-sector joint smart factory promotion team, which was transferred to the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in 2018, and the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team was launched in May 2019.

The Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team is a government-funded initiative that divides Korean companies into four stages, with each stage receiving 50% funding support to help them build smart factories.

The policy goals of the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team are: △Achieving the establishment of 30,000 smart factories for small and medium-sized enterprises in Korea; △Reaching the advanced factory level for approximately 25% of them; and △Supporting the establishment of an AI-powered small and medium-sized venture manufacturing platform (KAMP).

The government is focusing on qualitative improvement and has been focusing on promoting the first and second stages of advancement for small and medium-sized enterprises (support of 200 million won and 400 million won, respectively) since last year.

In fact, small and medium-sized enterprises are seeing economic benefits through smart construction, such as improved productivity and quality, reduced costs, and shortened delivery times.

In addition, after the coronavirus outbreak, the working environment improved due to 3D work automation in production sites, and the employment rate of young people increased by an average of 2.6 people before and after the introduction of smart factories.all.

■ What are the government's smart factory support policies this year?

The first project we are focusing on this year is the Digital Cluster Project, which will support the intensive implementation of Stages 1-4 over a three-year period by grouping companies along the supply chain that produce completed parts and products.

The background to the launch of this project is that many manufacturing companies and companies introducing smart factories have a proactive attitude towards smart factories after COVID-19.

On the other hand, when analyzing the performance after introducing smart factories, productivity increased by 28.5%, and sales increased by 7.4%. In other words, even if productivity is high, it does not directly lead to sales.

The reason is that small and medium-sized enterprises in our country are subcontractors of companies that manufacture finished products.

The Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team will bring together companies in clusters, centered around one company in each region, from 19 techno park centers across the country to build smart factories and exchange information to enhance the value of data.

Due to the nature of our country's corporate culture, which tends to be passive in pursuing collaboration, there are some difficulties in that there are relatively few companies that support us. However, I believe that sustainable mutual growth is possible only when companies work together to create new value.

Second, we are supporting the registration of many Korean small and medium-sized enterprises in the Lighthouse Factory System, which was created as part of efforts to establish global standards for smart manufacturing innovation.

There are about 90 factories listed on the lighthouse factory list, most of which are large corporations. In Korea, there are POSCO in 2019 and LS Electric in 2021.

To support small and medium-sized enterprises, the government created the 'K-Smart Lighthouse Factory Project', selected 10 companies last year and 10 more this year, and is providing 400 million won per year, totaling 1.2 billion won over three years.

■ Please give us your opinions on the requirements, difficulties, and solutions to achieve manufacturing innovation through technological advancement.

For companies introducing smart factories to achieve success, the technological level of their suppliers must be high.

The reality is that in our country, there are still many companies that are stuck at the level of factory automation in the era of the Third Industrial Revolution.

The reason is that our country's supply companies are lacking in the ability to utilize data to create smart factories.

The government will start from 2020 to raise the level of suppliers. We are supporting 430 billion won in smart manufacturing innovation R&D projects.

Over the next five years, our R&D program will support Korean suppliers to leverage not only existing technologies but also cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and the metaverse, leveraging artificial intelligence to generate economic benefits for the manufacturing industry.

Our country must have an entrepreneurial spirit and a spirit of challenge that can generate economic benefits beyond those achieved through active investment, along with government support.


※ Meanwhile, e4ds news will host the ' 2022 IIoT Innovation Day ' on the topic of ' Building an Industrial Communication Network for Digital Twins ' simultaneously online and offline at COEX Hall D and e4ds.com on Friday, April 8th. This seminar will be attended by Lee Soon-yeol, CEO of I2, B&R, Codezoo, Rockwell Automation, Ericsson-LG, and others, who will introduce the latest IIoT technologies. We look forward to your participation. You can apply for participation at the e4ds news conference .