According to national development plan, large-scale electronic industrial complexes are being constructed recently as announced on major newspapers such as Samsung Electronic’s Godeok district development plan. In relation to plant size, this leads ...
According to national development plan, large-scale electronic industrial complexes are being constructed recently as announced on major newspapers such as Samsung Electronic’s Godeok district development plan. In relation to plant size, this leads to an increase in construction cost, which covers plant construction itself and construction of production facilities, due to expansion of infrastructures related to integration of production facility and R&D departments.
In the case of domestic sites of L electronics, there are manufacturing plants and research institutes in Gumi, Changwon, Cheongju, Pyeongtaek, and Incheon, and in the case of Pyeongtaek digital park a total of 15,000 employees are working there everyday. In Home Entertainment Division, LCD-related products are being produced such as OLED TV, and in Mobile Communications Division researches are being carried out on smart-phone, wearables, tablet, and mobile accessories, which also includes a production line of prototypes.
In the case of R1 Ward (for TV production), the total area is 101,000㎡, and the area of each story of other production wards is also 15,000㎡ or larger. The sheer scale of these facilities presents a serious fire risk, requiring a dedicated Fire Prevention Center under supervision of various departments, which operates its own fire station that consists of water fire-engines and chemical fire-engines 24 hours a day.
Of fire-fighting facilities installed, the fire alarm system is one that has obtained an overseas certification (UL) with renowned expandability and reliability.
This fire alarm system is being operated as a network that consists of a main receiver and local receivers that are installed in each plant but, as it stands now, functions of these systems are not fully utilized.
Accordingly, in this research, an attempt was made to collect information on introduction of the fire alarm system of large-scale plants and derive operational problems after their installation and apply the National Fire Safety Code (NFSC) and NFPA Code of the U. S. to the plant sites in order to come up with a network improvement plan. For the purpose, we have analyzed kinds and characteristics of fire alarm systems that are installed in Korea, including both domestic and foreign manufacture, based on state-of-the-art fire alarm systems that are being operated in electronic plants of Korea, and checked actual operation state of the network of fire alarm system and understanding of the fire alarm system by personnel of the Fire Prevention Center. Thanks to these endeavor, we were able to verify various pre- and post-installation problems of the manufacturers and the facility construction companies. As a result, it turned out that, while a fire alarm system is an important facility that detects a fire and notifies it more than anything else, problems such as system malfunction, disconnection of lines, short circuit, and ground fault are often not treated immediately. Therefore, we have presented a proposal for the company that manufactured the fire alarm system to provide on-going refresher training on the software and for the facility construction company to make a summary of hardware problems and improvement plans and submit the related report to the electronic plants. On its part, the Fire Protection Center should provide regular education on special features and composition of the fire alarm system installed already instead of relying exclusively on obligatory biannual inspections and conduct its own inspection regularly using its own personnel. Such an effort to enhance its fire-fighting capability will be of great help in taking necessary measures for a system failure in time when a fire breaks out and in minimizing human casualties and property damage caused by a fire. This can also reduce damage to national competitiveness that results from operation suspension of production facilities in a Korea’s global corporation due to a fire.