An international partnership between U of T Engineering and several South Korean institutions will leverage AI to enhance manufacturing across the value chain — from material synthesis to quality control.
On July 28, officials from the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), the Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) and the Korea Automotive Technology Institute (KATECH) visited U of T Engineering to celebrate the opening of a new research centre and discuss future collaboration.
The new centre, named AI in Manufacturing (AIM), is one of eight Global Industrial Technology Cooperation Centers (GITCC) around the world, and the only one in Canada.
The AIM GITCC at U of T will be led by Professor Chi-Guhn Lee (MIE), with a scientific committee of three co-directors: Professors Chul Park (MIE), Yu Sun (MIE) and Seungjae Lee (CivMin).
“The research teams involved in this new centre have expertise in everything from material synthesis and manufacturing to data analytics and AI,” says Lee.
“This enables us to cover all stages of the manufacturing value chain — from raw materials all the way through to quality control.”
Lee and his team apply machine learning and optimization methods to improve manufacturing processes and supply chain systems more broadly.
He gives the example of an automotive assembly line designed to produce one new car every 37 seconds.
“What that means in practice is that every step in the manufacturing process has to happen in that time, which they call the ‘tick time,’” says Lee.
“But if you have, let’s say, 200 welding points in the car, you can’t do all of them in that time, so you have to split it up among different welding stations. How many you use depends on lots of different factors: your budget, the amount of available welding equipment, the cost of fuel, your floor space, worker schedules, etc. It gets complicated very quickly, but finding the optimal mathematical solution is what we do in my lab.”
Lee says that the rise of AI is enabling mathematical optimization research to take on even more challenges than ever before.
“We can now process images and video clips from monitoring cameras to get data that feeds into our optimization models. We can also convert our findings back into natural language using large language models such as ChatGPT,” says Lee.
“These new tools enable us to cover the entire process of manufacturing from end to end: material synthesis, processing, automation, robotics, system monitoring and control. It will also make it much easier for operators and practitioners to put our findings to use.”
Over the next few months, Lee and his team plan to work with manufacturers in South Korea to put together proposals for individual research projects that will be funded through the new AIM initiative.
The results could improve efficiency and lower costs across several manufacturing-intensive sectors, from the automotive industry to consumer electronics.
“Working with U of T on the AIM initiative is not only a natural extension of our long-standing R&D partnerships with Canada, but also a strategic opportunity to co-develop technologies that will define the future of key industries,” says Sungjin Baik, Director General for International Cooperation, KIAT.
“Their deep technical expertise, combined with a strong understanding of industry needs, makes them exceptional collaborators. Under their guidance, the GITCC at the University of Toronto will become a critical hub for connecting Korean industries with cutting-edge research in Canada.”
Markus Bussmann, chair of MIE, says that the AIM GITCC builds on the success of previous collaborations with South Korea in AI-related initiatives.
“We’re very pleased to further strengthen our mutually beneficial collaborations in this fast-growing sector,” says Bussmann.
“Through these partnerships, we are enhancing our research impact, providing students with valuable global perspective and creating value for the economies of both Canada and South Korea.”
– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on July 29, 2025, by Tyler Irving.