Chairman Christopher Koo of LS Group speaks of his feelings over LS ELECTRIC’s designating of the lighthouse factory while participating in WEF’s online annual meeting on Sept. 29. (Photos: LS Group)

LS ELECTRIC, a power, automation and smart energy unit of LS Group, has been designated as one of 2021’s “lighthouse factories” by the World Economic Forum.

LS ELECTRIC has become the second Korean company to be designated as a lighthouse factory for sustainability and productivity breakthroughs following POSCO, which become one of the 2019 lighthouse factories.

WEF’s Global Lighthouse Network Annual Meeting 2021 designated LS ELECTRIC’s smart factory in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do, as one of the 2021 lighthouse factories.

The annual event took place online, in a non-face-to-face format due to the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lighthouse factories are factories which achieve new manufacturing outcomes using exemplary models by making the most of core technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution, such as IoT, AI and cloud, like a lighthouse guiding ships by lighting up a dark sea.

WEF has announced lighthouse factories twice annually after screening factories around the world since 2018. Chairman Christopher Koo of LS Group spoke of his feelings while participating in the online event.

“LS ELECTRIC’s designating of the lighthouse factory is a great achievement in the course of digital transformation LS Group has implemented since 2015 and LS’s digital innovation will be pushed continuously to overcome the waves of the 4th Industrial Revolution down the road,” Koo said.

Koo said that other subsidiaries of LS group, pushing in-house digital transformation, will be encouraged to raise operational innovation levels by taking their cue from LS ELECTRIC’s.

 
The newly designated 21 lighthouse factories include three each in Europe and the United States, 13 in Asia and two in the Middle East.

They include prominent companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Schneider Electric and Foxconn. Only a combined 90 companies around the globe has been recognized as lighthouse factories.

WEF spoke highly of LS ELECTRIC’s Cheongju plant which has adopted a mass production method of dramatic unit price reduction through flexibility and production efficiency to meet customers’ diverse demands, departing from the simple application of AI and IoT technologies.

LS ELECTRIC has been credited with declaring ESG management, essential for corporate sustainable growth and raising energy efficiency by developing energy management solutions (EMG) on its own and applying them to its plant.

A whole view of LS ELECTRIC’s smart factory in Cheongju.

LS ELECTRIC’s Cheongju plant is outfitted with a majority of core smart factory technologies, such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-based automation equipment model change system enabling the mass production of diverse kinds of products, in-house logistics robots enabling self-driving, AI-based real-time autonomous welding system and machine learning-based noise and vibration inspection system.

LS ELECTRIC has made efforts to create the ecosystem of a manufacturing powerhouse by sharing data such as raw materials, parts and equipment, production and quality in real time with its cooperative companies and analyzing and offering it.

An LS ELECTRIC official said, “It is further significant for LS ELECTRIC’s Cheongju plant, built with our smart factory technologies, to be recognized as a lighthouse factory to light the future of the global manufacturing industry.”

LS ELECTRIC will spare no efforts to not only produce the world’s best products by applying smart technologies, but also upgrade the competitiveness of the Korean manufacturing industry by spreading smart factories to SMEs using the open platform “Task Square,” the official said.