Japanese and Korean shipbuilders deploy robots to take on China

South Korea and Japan are accelerating efforts to deploy robots in their shipyards as China’s dominance of the industry alarms Washington and its allies.

The push towards “smart shipyards” has become essential as Seoul and Tokyo grapple with deepening labour shortages, long order backlogs and intensifying competition from lower-cost Chinese rivals, which secured 63 per cent of ship orders last year, according to Clarksons.

The two east Asian countries are vital for the US to reduce reliance on China for commercial and naval shipbuilding. The two largest shipbuilding nations after China comprise 40 per cent of global vessel production as of last year and possess crucial technological expertise on liquefied natural gas carriers, submarines and marine engines.

However, they face an uphill task as some experts said Chinese yards had outpaced them in developing and deploying welding robots and smart systems in one of the toughest industries to automate.

“China is adopting robots for shipbuilding more aggressively and at a faster pace than the other two countries,” said Woo Jong-hun, a professor of naval architecture and ocean engineering at Seoul National University.

Shipbuilding is difficult to automate because every vessel differs in design and structure, unlike standardised products such as cars.

Yards are also complex and hazardous outdoor working environments, with narrow and irregular spaces similar to construction sites for buildings. As such, the sector remains heavily dependent on an ageing pool of skilled workers.

“Our future competitiveness and long-term survival depend on whether we can develop multifunctional robots using AI and autonomous technologies,” said Ryu Sang-hun, vice-president at HD Hyundai Samho, an affiliate of South Korea’s largest shipbuilder. “Robots help us make up for labour shortages and guarantee product quality.”

While skilled workers may complete individual jobs more quickly, robots excel at maintaining consistent quality and output. A worker can complete as many as 30 welding cells a day, while robots can increase that to up to 50, according to HD Hyundai Samho, which estimated that the technology could help accelerate the delivery of vessels by days.

Fanuc, the world’s largest industrial robot maker, has produced its first two welding and painting machines tailored exclusively for shipbuilders. It aims to deploy as many robots as people in Japan’s shipbuilding industry, which has 75,000 workers, to enable night-time operations.

“Shipbuilders now see automation to be urgent and trials have started in earnest,” said Kenichiro Abe, senior managing officer at Fanuc.

At HD Hyundai’s yards in Ulsan, robots identify welding locations using design data, move between ship blocks and perform simple welding, while workers supervise operations through computer systems. Hanwha Ocean, South Korea’s third-largest shipbuilder, said a human operator could manage up to 10 robots for standardised welding work.

Experts were divided over whether China was further ahead in automation than South Korea and Japan, which have more mature shipbuilding industries.

George Q Huang, a professor of smart manufacturing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, estimated South Korean and Japanese yards were likely to be five years ahead in adopting robots, but China “should be more or less able to catch up” in that timeframe.

Like in South Korea and Japan, the rollout in China, where the population is declining, was being driven by labour shortages, said Huang, who is working on a project to introduce robots at a small shipyard in Zhuhai.

“The conditions are bad and [the work] is very hard, so young people don’t like to enter this industry anymore.”

The industry’s ultimate goal is to produce “dark factories” that rely almost exclusively on robots. HD Hyundai aims to fully automate some production lines and build a small dark factory by 2030 using AI, big data and “digital twins” — replicas of the physical world that update in real time to allow safe testing of automated manufacturing processes.

Hanwha Ocean has invested Won160bn ($120mn) over the past two years on smart yards and wants to automate 70 per cent of production by 2030. The company also plans to introduce automation to its US operations as Seoul and Washington strengthen co-operation to revive American shipbuilding.

But Woo of Seoul National University said it would be difficult to completely automate many shipbuilding processes within the next five years “because complex work still requires the dexterity of human hands”.

Ryu of HD Hyundai Samho said robots could perform more than 90 per cent of simple welding tasks, but they struggled with more complex work such as curved-block welding, painting and plumbing.

Samsung Heavy Industries, South Korea’s third-largest shipbuilder, admitted that automation — although a “must for survival” — remained technically challenging and costly.

“We’re in an era where it is extremely difficult to judge the timing and effectiveness of investments,” said Yukito Higaki, president of Imabari Shipbuilding, Japan’s largest shipbuilder.

Yang Jong-seo, a researcher at the Export-Import Bank of Korea, said China’s extensive government support meant its industry could absorb the risks more effectively.

“Robots are badly needed for Korea and Japan to compete better with China as local workers increasingly avoid difficult and dangerous jobs for relatively low wages,” he said.

“But they must carefully weigh the costs and benefits because automation requires enormous investment, while government-backed Chinese shipbuilders can absorb the costs of trial and error.”