SKT to Establish Specialized Team for Smart Factory Construction... First Adoption of NatureTech

(Photo from left) Lee Jun-young, Head of Business Division at Bosch Rexroth Korea; Hwang Gyu-cheol, CEO of Naturetech; Choi Nak-hoon, Smart Factory CO Head at SK Telecom; Moon Je-chang, CEO of Value Companion

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] SK Telecom is partnering with Value Companion and Bosch Rexroth Korea to create a specialized team that provides one-stop support for smart factory construction.

According to SK Telecom on the 16th, the three companies agreed on the 12th through a business agreement to establish a one-stop support system combining IT solutions and consulting to generate tangible benefits such as profit improvement for companies adopting smart factories.

SK Telecom provides its big data analysis solution, ‘Metatron Discovery,’ and a cloud analysis environment. It stores real-time production information collected from each production process and implements machine learning models based on the correlation analysis between production information and defective product data from inspection processes. Additionally, these models are integrated into ‘Metatron,’ and the machine learning model results are visualized and provided to adopting companies.

Value Companion is responsible for consulting related to enhancing quality and productivity at manufacturing sites and verifying improvement effects. They analyze process quality in production lines, define analysis tasks, and design machine learning models. Bosch Rexroth supports IoT gateway provision and data transmission from manufacturing equipment.

Through this collaboration, companies aiming to introduce smart factories can receive a systematic one-stop service that perfectly matches their requirements, from manufacturing status analysis to optimal hardware and solution support and verification of improvement effects.

The first company to receive one-stop support from the specialized team is Naturetec, a health functional food company. Naturetec had needs for ▲real-time data collection on health functional food production processes ▲prevention of quality defects through automatic control ▲improvement of quality and productivity through big data analysis and machine learning-based optimal working conditions.

Founded in 1976 as Namyang Aloe, Naturetec is a natural material development and health functional food specialized manufacturer. It was the first health functional food manufacturer to introduce a smart factory system in 2019 and has implemented an automated production equipment control system through the second phase of smart factory advancement.

The three companies plan to actively cooperate to build smart factories centered on adopting companies targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized companies. SMEs and mid-sized companies face significant burdens regarding equipment investment costs, and due to social environmental changes such as minimum wage increases and reduced working hours, they also face high burdens in hiring separate personnel to operate smart factories. The three companies intend to continuously develop and expand various cooperation models to meet companies’ system-based operational needs arising from social environmental changes and to improve corporate profitability.

Choi Nak-hoon, Head of SK Telecom’s Smart Factory CO (Company), said, “It is encouraging that the completion level of smart factory construction will be further enhanced through a specialized smart factory team combining IT solutions and consulting,” adding, “We will support reducing trial and error and application time in the smart factory adoption process through 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and big data technology capabilities to help strengthen the competitiveness of Korea’s manufacturing industry.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.