Purpose This study aims to report an actual case of smart factory by choosing one of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises and eventually implement smart factory initiatives successfully across the country. This research demonstrates performance improvement through smart factory with several performance measures to present the guidelines for supporting Korean small and medium-sized enterprises.
Methods A case study is carried out to check the effects of smart factory on a parts manufacturer in the defense industry. As one of the information systems for smart factory, a manufacturing execution system is applied to all the manufacturing processes of the parts manufacturer as an effort to integrate information in real time. In order to show performance improvement, this research makes the comparisons of several performance measures before and after the implementation of the smart factory.
Results This paper quantitatively reveals that smart factory reduces inventory and improves the efficiency of the equipment as well as the productivity of the manufacturing process.
Conclusion As a result of the analysis, it is shown that the improvement is made by analyzing and utilizing the data and information collected in real time in the smart factory.