Seen is LG Electronics washing machine and dryer manufacturing plant in Clarksville, Tenn., Jan. 9. Courtesy of LG Electronics

By Baek Byung-yeul

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. ― After exiting the highway northwest of Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, there is a road called LG Way named to commemorate LG Electronics' first U.S. washing machine manufacturing plant.

LG opened its Tennessee factory at the end of 2018 as part of the home appliance giant's preemptive move to reduce logistics costs, tariffs and delivery times. Since then, the factory has been operating three manufacturing lines to produce front-loading and top-loading washing machines and dryers.

When visiting the factory on Jan. 9, Lyu Jae-cheol, president and head of the company's Home Appliance & Air Solution (H&A) division, said LG added a new dryer manufacturing line in order to expand its presence in the U.S. washer and dryer market.

"We have set up a dryer line to actively respond to premium demand by increasing local production in the U.S., the world's largest home appliance market," Lyu said. "We will expand our dominance in the washer and dryer market in North America by supplying them stably via our advanced manufacturing system."

For the dryer line, LG conducted test operations last September, and recently began mass production. To add the line it invested $30 million and its cumulative investments amount to $390 million. The company said the annual production capacity of the plant is now 1.8 million appliances ― 1.2 million washing machines and 600,000 dryers.

Robot arms assemble parts for washing machines at LG Electronics' plant in Clarksville, Tenn., Jan. 9. Courtesy of LG Electronics

As the home appliance chief said, the Tennessee factory's automation rate is 63 percent, which is the highest level among home appliance manufacturing plants.

"The Tennessee plant has a similar automation level with our Changwon plant in Korea," Lyu said. The Changwon plant is a core manufacturing facility of the company, producing premium gadgets using highly advanced automation processes.

During a recent visit to the production line, all kinds of machines were producing various parts. LG said the plant was designed to conduct almost every process of device manufacturing in one place, from manufacturing parts to assembly, as it has been difficult for its partner companies to support them because of high wages.

"The Tennessee plant is designed to internally produce various parts inside the company such as metal press processing, plastic injection molding and painting," said Song Hyun-wook, production department leader of the plant.

LG aims to increase the automation rate to nearly 70 percent by the end of this year, to be the best in class in terms of home appliance manufacturing plants.

Thanks to its advanced facilities, the Tennessee plant was chosen as the Lighthouse Factory by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The designation means the plant has faithfully adopted Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies.

Seen are automated guided vehicles on the floor of LG Electronics' plant in Clarksville, Tenn., Jan. 9. Courtesy of LG Electronics

A notable scene at the plant was its automated guided vehicles (AGVs), as a lot of vehicles busily carried piles of parts at weights of up to 600 kilograms with robot arms.

"There are around 30,000 QR codes placed on the floor of the factory. A total of 166 AGVs read these codes and automatically deliver the necessary parts for each process," Song said, adding that the vehicles now handle the parts delivery job that humans used to do more than 6,000 times a day.

Vision technology that uses machine learning to acquire parts data and automatically filter out defective parts also contributes to increasing the plant's automation rate, Song said. The company also utilizes big data and machine learning technologies to conduct quality virtual simulations of products.

"The machine learning technology-based vision equipment features many cameras so that they can filter out parts if the workers make mistakes or machines produce faults. With these kinds of systems, we can produce one washing machine every 11 seconds at maximum speed," Song said.

A bird's eye view of LG Electronics washing machine and dryer manufacturing plant in Clarksville, Tenn., Jan. 9. Courtesy of LG Electronics

Lyu added the Tennessee plant was originally planned for local production of LG's other home appliances such as refrigerators and ovens.

"When we decided to build a factory in Tennessee, we set up a plan to produce a variety of products, not only washing machines but also refrigerators and ovens. Depending on the situation, the timing is likely to be decided, though now is not the time to elaborate on the specific plan," the president said.