Samsung chief visits partner firm's smart factory in Busan

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, second from left, along with company staff visits Samsung Electro-Mechanics' Busan plant and inspects the Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors (MLCC) raw material manufacturing site, Tuesday. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics

By Kim Hyun-bin

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong visited Dong-A Plating, a medium-sized company located in Noksan National Industrial Complex in Busan, the company said, Tuesday.

After becoming chairman of Samsung Electronics on Oct. 27, Lee visited a partner company in Gwangju as his first on-site management destination. For his second visit, he toured Dong-A Plating in Busan, where Samsung Electronics helped build a smart factory.

"We must create a healthy ecosystem to achieve a virtuous cycle," Lee said after touring around the manufacturing site.

The smart factory construction support project is one of Samsung's representative corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, contributing to the development of Korea's manufacturing industry and providing Samsung's manufacturing innovation technology and know-how to strengthen the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Dong-A Plating specializes in electro zinc surface treatment. Since 2018 it has been receiving support from Samsung Electronics to build a smart factory. With this support, it has increased productivity by 37 percent and reduced its defect rate by 77 percent through manufacturing innovation such as factory automation.

The working environment has also been significantly improved in an aim to satisfy younger workers more as the average employee age at Dong-A Plating is only 32. The plating sector is known to enhance the competitiveness of national key industries such as IT, the automotive industry and shipbuilding.

Dong-A Plating received a commendation as an excellent smart factory in 2019 from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

Prior to this visit, Chairman Lee attended the first shipment ceremony for flip-chip ball grid arrays (FCBGA) for servers held at Samsung Electro-Mechanics' Busan plant. FCBGA is a package board that connects a main board, and is a product that requires the highest level of technology, the company said.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics' FCBGA reduces power consumption by 50 percent. The global semiconductor package substrate market is seeing increasing demand centering on high-end products for high-performance industries such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, and is expected to grow to $16.5 billion in 2027.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics plans to respond actively to increasing demand in the market for semiconductor package substrates for high-performance servers, which has been led by overseas companies such as those in Japan.