CJ OliveNetworks, the ICT solutions provider of CJ Group, said Friday it is joining hands with Germany’s largest electric and electronic business Siemens on smart factories.

On Thursday, CJ OliveNetworks CEO Cha In-hyok and Siemens Korea’s Digital Industry President Thomas Schmid signed an agreement at Siemens’ head office in central Seoul.

Under the agreement, CJ will be responsible for developing solutions for the establishment of smart factories and operation and maintenance of the facilities.

Siemens will supply products such as programmable logic controllers and supervisory control and data acquisition systems, and provide its know-how on building smart factories.

The software-focused affiliate of CJ is partnering with the German business in order to secure operational technology and hardware capabilities, it said.

Operational technology refers to software capability that can monitor, control and predict operations of facilities in factories.

The CJ firm aims to expand its current solution business to hardware operation as part of efforts to achieve a bigger goal of enhancing competitiveness in the smart factory field.

“Through the latest partnership, the company is gearing up for developing a full service platform for smart factories by combining its solution capabilities with OT and hardware technology,” said CJ OliveNetworks CEO Cha.

“This would help expand into new business areas of industrial IoT, AI-based facility maintenance and factory energy management,” he added, referring to the internet of things and artificial intelligence.