26.5% of small and medium-sized enterprises believe that smart manufacturing innovation is important, but only 19.5% have adopted smart factories. However, most of these are at a basic level, and there are opinions that the advancement of smart factories is necessary.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team announced the results of the '1st Smart Manufacturing Innovation Status Survey' on the 28th. This survey set the population as 163,273 small and medium-sized manufacturing corporations with factories as of 2023, and from that, a sample of 5,000 corporations was surveyed from October 2024 to January 2025.
According to this survey, 26.5% of all corporations believe that smart manufacturing innovation is important. It was also found that 22.8% of all corporations recognize its importance and are actively implementing or utilizing it.
In contrast, only 19.5% of small and medium-sized manufacturing corporations with factories have adopted smart factories. Among them, small enterprises account for 18.6%, while medium-sized enterprises account for 0.9%.
Furthermore, most smart factories are at a basic level and have been partially implemented. Among the corporations that adopted smart factories, 75.5% are at a basic level, and 99.8% have implemented it in parts.
Corporations have noted that advancement in the utilization level of smart factories is necessary. 45.7% of corporations indicated that the utilization level of smart factories needs to be advanced, and 26.56% of corporations reported that they would invest on their own to achieve this advancement.
Among the corporations that adopted smart factories, 92.4% collect manufacturing data, and 74% are analyzing it. Additionally, 5.2% have adopted or plan to adopt manufacturing AI, recording high figures compared to corporations with general factories.
The areas where smart factories are primarily utilized are production management (42.2%), followed by business planning and strategy establishment (26.3%), financial management (10.7%), technology innovation management (9.2%), and human resource management (4.4%).
Kwon Soon-jae, head of the Manufacturing Innovation Division at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, explained that this is 'the first official status survey to check the achievements and tasks of the smart factory policy being promoted for the digital transformation of small manufacturing sites.' He further noted that based on these results, 'plans are underway to promote DX in small manufacturing sites, to build regionally specialized manufacturing AI centers, to cultivate manufacturing AI specialized corporations, and to create a manufacturing DX and AX ecosystem.'