Smart factories

AI reaches 245 Korean factories, nearly half of Seoul's 2030 goal

At one plant in Gwangju, AI inspects parts and autonomous robots move materials, the trade ministry says.

Kbot Crew

Kbot Crew

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South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources says 245 factories nationwide have added AI under its state-funded AI-factory program. That is just under half the 500 AI factories it targets by 2030. South Korea already had the world's highest robot density in 2024, with 1,220 robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

The ministry defines an AI factory as one that applies AI to the manufacturing process to raise productivity. Its earlier counts used different units: 102 projects in October 2025 and about 170 sites in August 2026. In a Nov. 11 release, it said an analysis of 38 best-practice cases found a 30.1% gain in productivity, a figure it first reported in August.

One of those cases is Alps Electric Korea (한국알프스) in Gwangju, a city in southwestern South Korea, which uses AI vision inspection, robot simulation and autonomous mobile robots to automate quality inspection, painting and moving materials, the ministry said. SimPlatform (심플랫폼), a KOSDAQ-listed AI company with a contract for the plant's mold-making process, said in a release reported by HelloT (헬로티) that the plant is the Korean production base of the global electronics group Alps Alpine.

In an Aug. 3 supply-contract filing, SimPlatform said it will supply AI software and hardware to the plant from June 2026 to June 2028 for 2.53 billion won (about US$1.9 million). The contract is attached to a separate government project of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (중소벤처기업부) to optimize the plant's mold-making with AI, and is paid each year under that project's budget procedures.

Woosung Jeonggong (우성정공), which presented alongside Alps Electric Korea at the ministry's Nov. 11 conference in Gwangju, is applying AI-based tool-fault detection, productivity analysis and unmanned automation to mold-making that had relied on skilled workers' experience, the ministry said.

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Editor: Ian Lamont

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