# An Assessment of Smart Factories in Korea: An Exploratory Empirical Investigation
## 3 Survey Results  
We judged the skewness and kurtosis values for the normalization of the survey results and presented them in Table 3 below. First, the survey results concerning the business type showed that the two major types among the sample were those of automobile parts and the metal/machine/mold/machine parts manufacturing, accounting for 57% and 16% of all the manufacturing companies, respectively (Figure 2). Second, 66% of the companies we surveyed were SMEs, and the rest (28%) were small companies (Figure 3). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & & **Business** & **Company** & **Production** & **Order** & **Production** \\  & & **Type** & **Type** & **Method** & **Method** & **Type** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**N**} & Valid & 113 & 113 & 112 & 105 & 99 \\  & Missing & 0 & 0 & 1 & 8 & 14 \\  & Skewness & 1.423 & \(-\)0.111 & \(-\)0.211 & 1.184 & 0.842 \\ Std. Error of Skewness & 0.227 & 0.227 & 0.228 & 0.236 & 0.243 \\  & Kurtosis & 1.046 & \(-\)0.113 & \(-\)1.101 & 0.745 & 0.141 \\ Std. Error of Kurtosis & 0.451 & 0.451 & 0.453 & 0.467 & 0.481 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Statistics. Figure 2: Business type. Third, regarding the production methods used by the manufacturing companies we surveyed, most employed continuous processes (34%) and discrete processes (20%) (Figure 4). Fourth, according to the survey results of the smart factory technology to be applied within the manufacturing company (Figure 5), production prediction and production planning technology was the highest (39), followed by robot and automation technology (31). AI technology ranked the lowest; thus, it may be concluded that advanced technologies such as AI are difficult to apply in small and medium-sized manufacturing plants. From these results, we can see that many production management systems such as MES and WMS are introduced and utilized in manufacturing companies that have introduced smart factories. Based on these systems, it can be seen that the smart factory technology related to production planning and material tracking is mainly used. Figure 4: Production method. Figure 5: Smart factory technology to be introduced. Figure 3: Company type. Fifth, among the various manufacturing data generated at the shop floor, the survey results for the type of data that the manufacturing companies want to acquire and manage showed that process data was the most desired, followed by material and product data (Figure 6). Similarly, manufacturers hoped to manage equipment data, such as PLC data. In fact, manufacturing companies have various types of facilities operating within them; thus, securing and managing facility data is a difficult problem and requires another budget. Sixth, regarding the manufacturing process, among the 12 core modules of the MES system, the output management module was the highest (102), followed by the material management module (76), as shown in Figure 7. Judging from these results, we knew that the final product management is still more important than the manufacturing process in the manufacturing company. Next, the production order management module and tracking module were examined in the third and fourth order, respectively. However, the utilization of the module for integration systems (interworking management for legacy systems), which is an important point when building a smart factory, was found to be extremely low (3). Seventh, according to the results of the survey on the performance indicators for smart factories, the management of yield (75) and defect rate (58) were the most important to the companies (Figure 8). Figure 6: Desired data to be acquired and managed. Figure 7: MES (Manufacturing Execution System) module. Line operational rate (54) and sales (47) were also important indicators. On the other hand, job creation indicators related to the introduction of smart factories were low (1). This shows that manufacturing companies' interest in creating jobs when introducing new technologies is not high.