State-of-the-art smart systems that could only be seen before in science fiction movies now exist to meet today's real science and technology needs. A new era of faster and smarter technological evolution is being opened up, and scientists and engineers are making this futuristic idea a reality by bringing science fiction, fantasy, or cartoon stories to reality.
Factories, houses, and even cities with innovative smart systems have technology that is evolving and developing in an incredibly intelligent manner.One of the most notable recent issues was when the Korean government successfully demonstrated real-time control technology, which has been a weakness of smart factories. It was the world's first successful demonstration of an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) service that automatically controls and monitors smart factory facilities and robots anytime, anywhere.
With automation technology up to now, it has been difficult to manage the entire process because the automation is performed for each process. However, in the newly developed smart factory, all facilities and devices are connected by wireless communication, allowing data to be freely linked between processes. Through this, an organic and integrated production environment was established. It also changed the existing centralized production system and made it possible for manufacturing to decentralize the autonomy of production.
The smart factories can be said to be a rapidly changing innovation trend in the traditional manufacturing industry. It is an intelligent factory that applies information and communication technology (ICT) to the entire manufacturing process to increase productivity and reduce defect rates to enhance industrial competitiveness. The key is to use robots to automate tasks while remotely controlling processes anytime, anywhere. In order to implement a smart factory, the speed of data movement to prevent damage caused by communication errors is also important, but communication delay and data loss must be minimized. The longer the communication distance and the more complex the network is, the higher the delay and loss. At this time, the necessary technology is a low-latency, high-reliability communication technology.
As the economic structure shifts to the fourth industrial era, the life cycle of products in traditional manufacturing is rapidly shortening, and consumer demand diversifying. At the same time, personalized production is required, and the “small variety and mass production” manufacturing industry is taking a hit. In this situation, millions of manufacturers are actually facing the fear that they could go bankrupt if they don't switch digitally.
According to the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), which succeeded in this technology, the core of smart factories is to go from automation to digitalization that has evolved to the next level. It is a human-oriented, advanced intelligence factory that is customizing products at minimal cost and time. It is characterized by being able to collect process data in real time by installing the Internet of Things (IoT) in facilities and machines in the factory, analyze it, and control it by itself.
However, automation of the manufacturing process has not yet been reached. The parts which are difficult to standardize in the manufacturing process or logistics sector are still handled by humans. In order to establish a final smart factory, it is understood that the development of unstructured automation technology that can automate it must be made.
Technology convergence improves smart factory efficiency
The new smart factory is expected to develop by convergence with various technologies in the future. A typical example is a digital twin. Digital twin is a technology that predicts results by creating a twin of real objects on a computer and simulating situations that may occur in real life by a computer. If the digital twin is combined with a smart factory, it is possible to reduce losses and increase work efficiency by simulating the work process in advance.
Another technology is edge computing. Edge computing technology is one of the 10 strategic technologies selected by Gartner in 2018. Instead of transmitting massive amounts of data generated in industrial sites to the cloud at once, the edge computing technology is pre-processed at the edge and then selectively transmitted to the server and edge. It is a technology that performs data analysis and real-time control.
.The advantage of edge computing is that it reduces the latency of data processing and enables immediate on-site response. Edge computing, which processes data quickly and efficiently, is expected to attract more attention in smart factories amid concerns over server loads due to the increasingly exponential growth of data produced in factories.
In particular, edge computing is expected to show greater synergy effect by combining it with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Cresfree, a leading-edge computing company in Korea, is also providing a smart factory platform that analyzes vast amounts of data and algorithms in the cloud to create a machine learning model and delivers it to the edge to process data in real-time.
Remote manufacturing diversification service through 5G test network
Recently, ETRI connected the smart factory of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) using the 5G test network of Oulu University in Finland and the domestic test network. This demonstration showed a new remote manufacturing diversification service that independently controls a single factory at home and abroad. This is significant as the world's first attempt to increase the scope and utilization of smart factory services.
The ETRI control center demonstrated the operation and order of the MES (Manufacturing Execution System) and the real-time facility control and status monitoring service through the remote Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition(SCADA) control panel. Accordingly, Oulo Control Center showed remote control and operational state monitoring of mobile manufacturing robots, remote manufacturing process control using virtual reality (VR) equipment, and remote manufacturing process monitoring through narrow-band Internet of Things (NV-IoT) based wireless sensor data collection.
Expectation to revitalize cooperation between countries
This demonstration is evaluated to have advanced the smart factory of the future one step further. It is significant that it succeeded in demonstrating real-time remote control and monitoring service with a round-trip delay of less than 0.01 seconds in Korea and 0.3 seconds in overseas while connecting a wired network of more than 10,000 km.
By increasing the possibility of remote smart manufacturing services based on stable communication quality, it is expected that sharing and cooperation between countries in manufacturing and production will be activated. Control becomes easier even if you don't visit the site in person. In addition, it is expected that the global resource management and industrial competitiveness of SMEs will gain momentum as idle facilities in each industry can be efficiently utilized through remote control.