Software-driven Factory
Assembly Line
Inside Hyundai’s new sci-fi smart factory
The Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore (HMGICS, for short) isn’t just a firmware update of the traditional assembly line – it’s a futuristic (and mildly terrifying) look at our increasingly roboticized, AI-driven future. While Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot trots around to approve vehicles, a full digital twin of the factory floor runs simulations showing how the space can be better optimized. But arguably the most interesting thing is that you can order a new car at Hyundai’s plant and drive it away on the same day.
“This isn’t like a traditional production plant,” explains VP and Head of Smart Factory Technology, Alpesh Patel. “We plan to produce around 70 cars a day here, so it’s no mass production line, but that’s not the point. The speed at which we can react to customer personalization demands and cater to bespoke project requirements is like little else,” he adds. Patel claims that is can take as little as three hours to go from a customer ordering a vehicle to driving it away, thanks to the unique set-up of the highly automated cell-based production process.
Just a handful of highly skilled operatives work with walls of screens that can pull up a wealth of smart factory data, checking in on efficiency levels of each production cell and predicting when a robot requires servicing or a part needs to be ordered long before the need arises. A separate section of the room features a full digital twin of the factory floor (a meta factory, as it is referred to), which can run simulations when new production requirements arise. Patel claims that currently, staff in the Digital Command Centre are integral to the operation, but he states that AI will soon step up and begin taking care of most of the day-to-day functionality.