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| Samsung Electronics employees assemble parts for an air conditioner at the company's manufacturing line in Gwangju, Tuesday. The company has replaced the conveyor belt manufacturing system with the modular production method in which a veteran worker takes charge of a product from assembly to performance check. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics |
By Yoon Sung-won
GWANGJU ― Samsung Electronics is pushing to establish smart factory environments to boost the manufacturing efficiency of premium home appliances.
The nation's top electronics company has produced refrigerators, washers and dryers at its three complexes in this city. In particular, air conditioners and air purifiers, which have seen a sharp increase in demand between spring and summer in Korea, are being made here.
Starting this year, Samsung introduced robotics, a three-dimensional (3D) scanner, integrated machine control and the internet of things technologies for the unmanned and automated manufacturing environment. The company plans to complete the smart factory project by 2020.
"Under the smart factory project, we have pushed to automate the manufacturing process, tapping into technologies such as robotics. We have already seen a 25 percent improvement in productivity," said Lee Kye-bok, head of the air conditioner manufacturing group at Samsung's Gwangju plant.
Samsung Electronics is using the 3D vision cameras to automatically scan a product's external defects such as scratches and color differences.
"The use of 3D vision cameras has resulted in a 50 percent reduction in the rate of defects," Lee said. "The cameras are especially effective in detecting defects that are hard to see with the naked eye."
Diverse types of automated guided vehicles were carrying materials and parts between manufacturing machines. "The AGVs are designed to operate following either digital code signs over the workplace, guidelines on the ground or GPS signals, without human control," Lee said.
For the air conditioner and air purifier manufacturing lines at the Gwangju plant, Samsung Electronics has abandoned the conveyor belt system and adopted what it calls "modular" manufacturing since 2013.
In the modular manufacturing system, a veteran worker takes charge of his or her cell and thoroughly oversees the production process all the way through to the performance check stage, according to Lee. The company said six of its manufacturing lines have 14 production cells each.
"Establishing a smart factory is a complex task," Lee said. "We are concentrating on introducing advanced quality control methods to the fully automated manufacturing system to free it from quality issues."
Samsung Electronics is also operating a precision molding development center, which it claims is Korea's top research facility for mid- and large-sized molded parts for home appliances. It develops and produces external covers and metallic structures of Samsung's premium devices such as large-sized televisions, refrigerators, washers and air conditioners.
"This facility has the highest level of molding technologies among all our home appliance manufacturing bases around the globe," a Samsung Electronics official said. "We develop highly sophisticated moldings here to distribute to overseas manufacturing bases."
The company is also introducing smart factory technologies to the precision molding development and production facility.
"At this center, we are using technologies such as robotics and radio frequency identification, aiming at establishing a plant that runs without human workers around the clock by 2019," said Choi Sung-wook, an official at the precision molding development center. "This process is already helping us cut lead time between operations and reduce costs."
The facility also has advanced laser patterning machines that can make highly complicated patterns and the curved external designs of home appliances. "We are cooperating with Germany's Volkswagen for this technology, which is very rare in Korea," Choi said.
