[Report] Furniture Production Increased 5 Times... Visiting Hyundai Livart's 'Smart Factory'

Full-scale Operation of Automated Equipment at SWC in Yongin, Gyeonggi
About 50 Production Staff... Introduction of 400 Advanced Facilities
Annual Production Capacity of Up to 300,000 Kitchen Furniture Sets

Interior view of Hyundai Livart Smart Factory

On the 1st, on the 3rd floor of Hyundai Livart's Smart Work Center (SWC) located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, white industrial robots filled the view as soon as you entered the building. This place is a smart factory that recently began full-scale operation, where all furniture production processes are carried out with minimal human intervention. Robot arms move neatly stacked wooden plywood from cutting to edge banding (furniture edge finishing process), drilling, and final product packaging. The robots are even equipped with the function to load products at various angles considering the load to prevent damage to the finished products.

Until now, furniture factories had the inconvenience of production technicians having to manually adjust equipment settings according to each furniture design. However, in the smart factory, once design information is input into the system, production equipment for each process is automatically set, improving efficiency. The central system tracks material movement paths, and unmanned forklifts move or store materials optimally along designated routes in a coordinated manner. Hyundai Livart partnered with German system developer IMOS and equipment specialist HOMAG to build the smart factory composed of about 400 automated production facilities. Despite the COVID-19 situation, over ten German engineers entered the country to participate in the system construction process.

The smart factory is largely divided into mass production lines and customized production lines. The mass production line, consisting of five lines, mainly produces built-in kitchen furniture for apartments. Jang Jin-yong, head of Hyundai Livart’s production operations team, stated, "Production volume has expanded to the extent that kitchen furniture for 1,000 apartment units can be manufactured in just two days." The customized production line, suitable for small quantities of diverse products, carries out B2C (business-to-consumer) product processes tailored to individual preferences and needs.

The tasks performed by humans include material preparation, equipment monitoring, lubrication and cleaning, and resolving machine malfunctions. Team leader Jang explained, "Employees take a 10-minute break every 2 hours," adding, "By replacing human tasks with machines, the risk of safety accidents during work has decreased, and the defect rate has dropped by more than 90%." The production workforce, which previously required 120 to 200 people in conventional factories, has been reduced to about 50. Production speed has increased more than fivefold compared to before, and various sizes of furniture can be freely produced and shipped nationwide. The maximum annual production volume has increased to up to 300,000 sets based on Livart Kitchen (kitchen furniture).

SWC is an advanced integrated manufacturing and logistics facility that Hyundai Livart invested 147.5 billion KRW in over four years starting in 2017. The SWC, established on five floors with a total area of 85,950 square meters, houses a 17,000 square meter (5,200 pyeong) smart factory (3rd floor) and a 68,000 square meter (approximately 20,000 pyeong) logistics center (1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th floors). Hyundai Livart has been operating the SWC logistics facility since May last year and has been conducting pilot production since July to check the operation of key smart factory equipment.

Exterior view of Hyundai Livart Smart Work Center (SWC)