Today, we continued our company visits with two separate tours of Hyundai and TK Elevator. As we began our bus ride to the Hyundai Asan production facility, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I have always loved automobiles, and during high school I started performing maintenance and simple jobs on my own car. Visiting Hyundai Asan was the perfect opportunity to learn more about the production processes involved in both gasoline and electric vehicles.
After arriving at the plant, we were given a short introduction to Hyundai history. Hyundai Asan stands as a single branch to the Korean conglomerate Hyundai Group. The assembly plant focuses on the welding, painting, and processing aspects of automobiles. After our orientation, we went on a walking tour of the production plant. Hyundai Asan utilized several different technological mechanisms to aid in the autonomous aspects of their production line. Large robots were used to transfer steel body pieces throughout the plant, and the body welding process was entirely self-sufficient. It was fascinating to see the technology involved with the production process of Hyundai vehicles.
After our tour of Hyundai Asan, we hopped back into the bus to travel to our second company visit for the day. We toured TK Elevator, whose Korean branch is one of the largest producers for elevators and escalators in the world. TK Elevator is responsible not only for the production and implementation of smart mobility systems, but also for current upkeep and maintenance of elevators. During our tour, we were able to see how modernized the maintenance process for elevators had become. We saw elevators which could be monitored through a mobile phone, and observed several safety features pertaining to elevator drops during routine maintenance.
In addition to safety, TK Elevator is also a leader in innovation. We learned about twin elevator systems which include two elevators within a single elevator shaft, as well as elevators which were capable of moving both vertically and horizontally.
Our company tours today were filled with a variety of smart systems which augmented my understanding of modern production processes.