(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This may look
like just another car factory, but it's actually a new microfactory, manned by autonomous robot dogs and robotic arms monitored by AI. It's designed to change
the way cars are produced, and it's been built in the
heart of one of the smallest and most expensive countries
in the world, Singapore. Typically, car manufacturers
don't build car factories in dense urban cities like Singapore, but here it's gonna be different
for most car factories. Robots are g
oing to do a
lot of the manufacturing and it's gonna be a much
more flexible model. - [Narrator] Microfactories
reinvent the way cars are made by automating most of the process and building them in a cell rather than along a production line. - This could be the
future in which we talk in a couple of years from now. - [Narrator] Microfactories
are one of the biggest changes to car making in a generation
and if the concept is proven, it could shape the future of the industry. For over a hundred ye
ars, cars have been built in large plants, manned by hundreds of workers. The trend has been towards
building bigger factories. Tesla's Gigafactory facility
located near Austin, Texas, covers more than 10 million square feet of factory floor space,
and has the capacity to build more than
250,000 vehicles a year. By comparison, Hyundai's, new Microfactory in Singapore stands just
over 935,000 square feet. The car makers to the plant could produce up to 30,000 cars a year. Hyundai has pushed aside
the
traditional assembly process to allow for a much smaller footprint. - Behind me, there are robots
that are putting together the final finishing touches on a car. Typically, in a more conventional
manufacturing process that would actually
largely be done by humans, it would be done in a long assembly line which doesn't allow
for much customization. (bright music) - [Narrator] In
traditional auto factories, vehicles travel along a linear path and parts are installed
along an assembly line. Wh
ile the procedure is
increasingly automated, the basic process hasn't
significantly changed. - Here it's different. It's a cell-based model, which means that there are different
cells around the factory floor where they're are focused
on different tasks, and that actually allows
for a lot more automation. - [Narrator] In each
cell, robots are tasked with installing several components of the car before it's
moved to the next zone. Cells can be modified with
different instructions, from installing
parts in
an identical car design, to assembling a different
vehicle altogether. Hyundai says that more than 50%
of the manufacturing process at its Singapore microfactory
is done by robots. Automated ground vehicles move
the cars around the factory, while four-legged robots
equipped with AI cameras monitor and analyze the assembly. Issues identified by the robot dogs are then fixed by human workers. - Even though we're a small factory, we're producing cars
as a mass manufacturer. So what allows
us to do that is the usage of flexible automation and a large portion of systems intelligence behind to orchestrate the manufacturing. - [Narrator] Hyundai says, because production is highly automated, only about a hundred
workers would be needed to produce the plant's capacity
of 30,000 cars per year. That means a worker at the
microfactory could produce two to three times the number of cars compared to a person in
a traditional factory. - For sure, we will still
need large scale factories. We
will still need to produce as many cars as possible the most effective way when it comes to overall mobility. But we feel that the
answer is not only that, and that in an urban environment,
having a smaller factory that allows us to produce
as many different types of mobility devices in
a cost-effective way is absolutely critical. - Hyundai's plant in Singapore is the country's first auto
factory in over 40 years. While microfactories could
allow wealthier countries to rebuild manufacturing ind
ustries, the move toward greater automation will mean fewer manual jobs for workers. - In a typical assembly
plant, you would think for the assembly operation
of high single digit to double digit percentage of automation of automated tasks, we
are at around 50% already. When it comes to logistics,
the provision at the right time of the right part to the right cell is again something where we've
automated over 60% already. It's also in very low double
digit in other factories, it's essentially ma
nual. - [Narrator] Microfactories
are largely untested ground for the auto industry. Arrival, an EV startup
producing vans has committed to manufacturing their
vehicles out of microfactories. However, the company has
only delivered a small number of the vehicles that forecasted
out of its plant in the UK. Arrival has struggled
to ramp up production and a push back a plan second
microfactory in the US. For now, Hyundai says it's
the only major car maker to start building vehicles out of one. - We
have a thesis for
the future of mobility. As we test the market, if we
realize that this is right, you could see smart urban mobility hubs in many different urban environments. - [Narrator] While the
concept behind microfactories remains unproven at a mass scale, they provide a glimpse into
what car making could look like as the industry heads towards a future that is more automated. (gentle music)
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