It was decided to prepare measures to foster the smart factory supply industry, including controllers and sensors, by February .

The government has issued a public notice for related projects to deploy more than 2,200 smart factories this year.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy is focusing on expanding and advancing the adoption of smart factories and strengthening the competitiveness of the domestic smart factory supply industry to accelerate manufacturing innovation in preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced that it has decided to strengthen policies to promote smart factories for small and medium-sized enterprises and projects to foster the smart factory supply industry, judging that innovation in manufacturing through the convergence of manufacturing and information and communication technology (ICT) is essential to secure the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing.


▲ Screenshot from the promotional video of the Public-Private Joint Smart Factory Promotion Team.

Accordingly, a total of 110.8 billion won will be invested jointly by the public and private sectors this year to support the establishment of smart factories for more than 2,200 (cumulative 5,000) small and medium-sized enterprises. It has been decided to identify 3,000 demand companies and provide intensive support, and starting this year, in addition to the individual construction method that has been distributed so far, 500 clean energy smart factories that achieve both productivity improvement and energy efficiency through the application of new energy industry technologies will be supported.

In particular, we will diversify and advance deployment methods by deploying more than 50 cloud-based smart factories, which serve as the foundation for connecting all manufacturing industries through inter-regional and inter-industry linkages. A cloud-based smart factory is a service model in which solutions located in a remote data center (IDC) are utilized and monthly usage fees are paid, instead of directly installing and operating servers within the factory.

Measures to foster the smart factory supply industry, including controllers and sensors, as a key promising industry of the future will also be finalized in February. First, a total of 99.1 billion won will be invested this year to provide intensive support for the research and development (R&D) of core smart factory controllers and sensors, and new demand for domestic controllers and sensors will be created in conjunction with smart factory deployment projects.

In addition, there is a plan to produce 135 master's and doctoral degree holders over the next five years who have completed convergence education, such as smart factory operation and design, to foster talent that will lead the smart factory supply industry.

Announcement of the 2017 Smart Factory Supply and Expansion Project

On the 2nd, the government finalized and announced the 2017 Smart Factory Supply and Expansion Project Plan containing these details, and decided to proceed with the project in earnest this year as well. Companies wishing to establish a smart factory under this project can follow the application procedure through the Smart Factory Project Management System (Smart Factory Promotion Team website).
Companies selected for support can receive funding for the implementation costs of smart factory solutions (such as MES) for product design and production process improvement, as well as for the purchase of automation equipment, controllers, and sensors linked to the solutions. Additionally, consulting services from experts with over 15 years of experience in the relevant field (smart factory coordinators) are provided to facilitate the establishment of customized smart factories.

According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the results of smart factory construction are gradually becoming visible among the 2,800 small and medium-sized enterprises that received support from the smart factory dissemination and expansion project until last year.

The Smart Factory Promotion Team announced that companies that have implemented smart factories have seen improved competitiveness through increased productivity (23%), reduced defect rates (△46%), lowered costs (△16%), and shortened delivery times (△34.6%). They added that this enhanced competitiveness has also led to improved business performance, including business diversification, the opening of new sales channels, and job creation. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy plans to ensure the smooth implementation of the 2020 goal of distributing 10,000 smart factories in cooperation with the Korea Federation of SMEs and other organizations.

Moving forward, we plan to promote joint R&D utilizing demo factories and international cooperation in the field of standards, centering on the “Smart Factory Supplier Alliance.” This will be done in parallel with actively expressing opinions through international standardization organizations (ISO, IEC) and developing application and linkage standards for existing international standards, such as OPC UA. For example, Korea’s KETI and Germany’s Siemens are jointly developing application standards that enable inter-factory connectivity beyond the factory level by linking OPC UA with the open Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).