Korea sets first national strategy to standardize manufacturing data for AI

South Korea's industry ministry said Thursday it has drawn up the country's first comprehensive strategy for manufacturing data, aiming to standardize factory records and open them to AI developers as part of its push to spread artificial intelligence across manufacturing.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced the roadmap at the launch of the data division of M.AX Alliance, a public-private grouping, at a manufacturing AI solutions center in Pangyo. Minister Kim Jung-kwan attended along with data experts from industry and research institutes, including the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology, the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology and the Korea Electronics Technology Institute.

Companies have struggled to put factory data to work, according to the ministry. Formats and definitions differ between firms and industries, businesses are reluctant to share core data externally, and the data that has been collected often lacks the quality and security controls needed for AI training.

The ministry framed the data division's launch as a shift from fragmented, company-by-company efforts to a joint public-private response, and described the roadmap as the first comprehensive strategy covering manufacturing data.

The strategy covers the whole chain from collection through standardization to storage and use, the ministry said.

Standardization is the first of its four pillars. The other three are the strategic collection of data guided by a reference map, safer and more systematic management through infrastructure including a manufacturing data library, and the development of a manufacturing foundation model, or MFM, alongside support for specialist AI companies. Standardization is meant to lower the cost and uncertainty of sharing data and to make it usable across companies and industries, the ministry said.

The national manufacturing data library is to be built and operated from 2027 to 2031, with 116 billion won ($86.7 million) set aside in the government's 2027 budget proposal.

Kim Jun-ha, head of the AI Policy and Strategy Graduate School at GIST, and Park Hyun-woo, a professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Data Science, were appointed co-chairs of the data division.

"Connecting the skills and know-how accumulated on factory floors with high-quality data is the key to competitiveness in manufacturing AI and the central task of the M.AX Alliance," Kim said. He urged the data division to produce results that companies and workers can feel through cooperation across industries, and said the government would put in place common standards and secure infrastructure so that companies can provide and use data with confidence.