“Singapore is the starting point for all of Hyundai’s future mobility processes.”

“Singapore is a very small market and a small country, but many brands have entered the market and are trying various things.”

Hong-Beom Jeong, Executive Director and head of Hyundai Motor Group’s Singapore Global Innovation Center (HMGICS), explained the background of HMGICS’ establishment in Singapore in a recent interview.

Customer feedback on which devices are suitable and how they should be customized is important for future mobility, and Singapore is the most suitable market to meet this.

He said, “Hyundai Motor Group Global Innovation Center (HMGICS) aims to innovate the entire value chain by collaborating with Singaporean society to research how to provide future mobility to customers. “We want to secure the technology and expand it globally,” he emphasized.

A smart factory like HMGICS is a platform that other global automakers have also said they would jump into. As such, Hyundai Motor Group’s unique differentiation is expected to greatly contribute to securing customer satisfaction and competitiveness in the future.

Regarding this, CEO Jeong cited HMGICS’ differentiation as ‘intelligence’ and ‘autonomy’. CEO Jeong pointed out, “A robot that senses with five senses like a human and makes decisions and executes actions as if it has a brain should become an important component.”

He emphasized, “HMGICS has a system that senses the entire factory, receives data, and supports artificial intelligence to analyze the data to produce optimized production. In the future, we aim to even achieve autonomous production.” .

“Other factories are also called smart factories, but they receive data from some processes and optimize it to a low level,” he said. “On the other hand, what Hyundai Motor Group pursues is the intelligence and autonomy of the overall factory process. This is the biggest difference.” It was elaborate.

Currently, HMGICS has about 270 employees. Of these, research and development personnel account for more than half. As CEO Jeong explains, the foundation for the intelligence and autonomy of the entire system has been laid from the start.

As HMGICS aims to be a smart factory, the way it makes cars is clearly different from existing factories. Instead of the existing conveyor belt, where dozens or hundreds of workers stand for each process, only a robot and one employee are in a small, oval-shaped workshop called a ‘cell’.

There are concerns about opposition from existing workers who have lost their place in the cell system, where a single robot takes over the role of dozens or hundreds of workers, but CEO Jeong emphasizes that since it is still in the early stages, harmonious convergence must be achieved to avoid confusion.

CEO Jeong is optimistic that HMGICS will be able to make a positive contribution to other plants in the future, such as the Ulsan plant in Korea and Georgia in the United States.

CEO Jeong said, “There are innovations in the factory itself, but there are also process innovations for each process,” adding, “The parts that require the development of a control system called clean management, such as automation and movement of goods using mobile robots, are areas where this will need to be applied in the future.” “I am confident that it will have a positive impact on the factory as well.”

In addition, the cars currently produced are the IONIQ 5 and some self-driving taxis, but the company also expressed its ambition to expand further.

CEO Jeong said, “In the future, the demand for customization of all cars will increase, and to this end, we will think about how to supply a variety of cars to meet the market demand.” He added, “We will develop a new car platform for this and innovate manufacturing based on these vehicles.” “We will do it,” he pledged.