Era of Smart Factory
According to related industries on September 20, GE is expanding cooperation with key domestic companies such as POSCO, Hanhwa, and KEPCO to build smart factories. Currently, the world smart factory market is led by Siemens and GE. In particular, GE has recently been focusing on Korea as a major target market and clearly making moves to build partnership this year.
At the end of last month, Bill Lu, chief executive officer for GE Digital as well as senior vice president and chief digital officer (CDO) for GE, visited Korea and said, "We built partnership in North America and Europe most advanced in the field of smart factories first and successfully made a foray into the Middle East.
“Korea has great and powerful manufacturing companies and they want GE to be their first partner in going global," Ruh stressed, actively courting Korean companies. In March of this year, GE chairman Geoffrey Immelt visited Korea to meet with POSCO chairman Kwon Oh-joon and chairman Kim Seung-yun of the Hanwha Group to build trust with Korean companies.
Korean companies are seeking to secure smart factory-related technologies in various ways, but they are far behind GE and Siemens. LS Industrial Systems has secured and commercialized both smart factory-related software and hardware technology among Korean companies. However, the company still has a long way to go as its smart factory construction experience has been limited to its and its partners’ factories. Samsung SDS, SK C&C, LG CNS, POSCO ICT and other systems integrators are trailing LS Industrial Systems through their own technologies.
The smart factory market is growing every year. According to market research agency Markets and Markets, the global smart factory market is expected to grow 5.4% annually on average from US$ 46.2 billion in 2016 to US$ 56.6 billion in 2020.