The global market for smart factory is likely to expand to US$246.0 billion by 2018 from $155.2 billion in 2012.
As the smart factory market gets bigger, manufacturing powerhouses like Germany and the United States will fight hard to preempt the smart factory technology standards. Preempting standards is critically important in gaining competitive edge in the global market.
For this reason, corporations in countries like the United States, Germany, and Japan are doing everything they can to dominate the standards while at the same time developing proprietary technology for the smart factory.
The standards on the smart factory have not yet been set. Currently the International Electrotechnical Commission and the International Organization for Standardization are working together to discuss strategies for standardization by establishing advisory groups. The present stage is to designate basic component parts of a smart factory. The countries showing keenest interest in this effort are Germany and the United States, as they hold the most number of patents and technologies related to the smart factory.
As for the Korean government, it is focusing on efforts to turn some of the proprietary technologies recognized as international standards into smart factory standards. One of such examples includes "RAPInet," the communication standard developed by LS Industrial Systems. Lee Kyu-bong, manager in charge of smart factory at the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, said, "We are working to get Korea-developed production management systems and enterprise resource planning systems to be adopted as standard technologies."
