Key units including SDV Center established this year under restructured AIX office
'Reliance on foreign workers unsustainable; risk of skill discontinuity'
HD Korea Shipbuilding & Ocean Engineering has significantly expanded and restructured its AIX (AI Transformation) office — a key unit reporting directly to the CEO — as the company accelerates its push to build the shipyard of the future. The move reflects a strategy to confront the shipbuilding industry's chronic labor shortage, driven by population decline and rising education levels, through technological advancement and organizational overhaul.
Kim Hyeong-gwan, president of HD Korea Shipbuilding, said Thursday at the KR 66th Anniversary Seminar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul that the company had established new units under the AIX office this year, including an SDV Center. Kim directly oversees the AIX office, which handles AI-related core functions and software development for HD Korea Shipbuilding.
Specifically, the company recently overhauled the existing structure within the AIX office, which had comprised an AI Center and a DX (Digital Transformation) Center. The DX Center was divided into a DX Strategy Division and a DX Operations Division to sharpen both expertise and execution. The software development function for onboard vessel systems was also spun off from the AI Center to form the newly created SDV (Software Defined Vessel) Center.
The restructured AIX office will lead a two-track push to advance both products and production facilities. On the product side, the SDV Center will spearhead efforts to develop proprietary technology for controlling a vessel's entire cargo and propulsion systems through software. Autonomous navigation will remain the domain of dedicated subsidiary Avikus, but the company plans to complete the underlying intelligence of the vessels themselves — the SDV layer — in-house, widening its technology gap over competitors including China.
On the production side, the DX Center will take the lead. Kim said building a unified platform connecting every stage from design onward will take another one to two years, so the company is focusing first on computer modeling — known as digital manufacturing — for production equipment as the most immediately actionable step. "We are prioritizing support for outside partner companies that face the most severe labor shortages, linking digital manufacturing-based automation equipment to government-backed projects," he said.
The sweeping AI reorganization stems from a stark recognition that relying solely on foreign workers to fill labor gaps is not a sustainable path for the shipbuilding industry. "No matter how many foreign workers we bring in, it is hard to sustain that for more than 10 years," Kim said. "If they return home after five to seven years without fully settling in Korea, skilled expertise ultimately never accumulates — it just gets cut off."
Simulation and platform-based process optimization are therefore the best alternative, Kim said. The impact of rigorously simulated equipment automation is already being demonstrated on the factory floor. A prime example is the world's first AI-based autonomous manufacturing facility for lugs — critical components in shipbuilding — built by HD Hyundai Mipo. "It used to be a grueling manual process requiring around 10 workers," Kim said. "After more than six months of digital simulation and digital manufacturing, it now runs as a fully unmanned workshop with just one operator on site."
HD Korea Shipbuilding has drawn up a medium-to-long-term roadmap to gradually roll out such autonomous manufacturing systems and fundamentally transform its shop-floor operations. "If we pursue automation in stages, we should be able to reduce the workforce needed on-site by at least 30 to 50 percent over the next five to ten years," Kim said, adding that the remaining roles would shift toward operators rather than manual laborers. He said the company would continue applying physical AI — technology that gives machines intelligence — while treating humanoid robots and similar technologies as a longer-term challenge to prepare for over the next five or more years.
keg@heraldcorp.com
