Agricultural Machinery Enters the ‘Software’ Era… GLINS Aims to Break Through Global Tier-1 Barriers with Platforms and Standardization

[Korea Agricultural Technology Newspaper = Reporter Baek Cheol-hyun] The ‘off-highway’ market, including agricultural and construction machinery, which had remained in traditional manufacturing, is rapidly shifting—following the passenger vehicle market—into an era of software-centered intelligent integrated control platforms.

At a time when farm household income diversification and interest in AgTech are higher than ever, a domestic startup in the off-highway sector has drawn attention from academia and industry by presenting a technology-driven master plan to break the barrier of global companies’ ‘platform monopoly’ and target the global market.

Kim Deok-hoon, CEO of intelligent integrated control platform specialist GLINS, said at a presentation of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery held in Jeju on the 14th, “Global Tier 1 suppliers are already locking in automakers not with standalone controllers but with ‘integrated platforms’ that bundle software and telematics,” warning that “if Korean parts makers remain stuck in the standalone supply model, the global gap will widen further.”

■ The core of the domestic-global technology gap: ‘software integration’ and ‘certification assets’

Kim pointed to a market environment in which global giant OEMs such as John Deere and Caterpillar develop controllers in their own vertically integrated structures, while Tier 1 companies such as Bosch are building proprietary platform lines such as ‘Borders.’ Korea, too, has reached a world-class level in developing standalone controller hardware, but the key gaps are analyzed as ▲the absence of a software integration platform to tie them together ▲a lack of functional safety certification assets ▲and a shortage of track record within global OEM supply chains.

As a solution, GLINS unveiled a ‘five-layer (hardware, middleware, data, communication, application) intelligent integrated control platform’ tailored to the third-generation off-highway architecture now evolving in the market.

A key feature of this platform is that it integrates not only vehicle control but also telematics and OTA (over-the-air update) functions into one. According to GLINS’s verification data, when the system is integrated in this way, vehicle effective time decreases by 20–30%, while fuel consumption is reduced by 18% and maintenance costs by 22%, demonstrating outstanding efficiency. On a macro level, these figures suggest the potential to create enormous economic value ranging from about 1.7 trillion won to 2.9 trillion won.

■ “Standards are not a choice but survival”… proposal for a Korean-style K-AgTech alliance

Kim cited the Korean automotive industry’s mass-production quality know-how accumulated in the passenger vehicle market, government R&D policy support, and geographic proximity to the domestic Big 3 OEMs as strong advantages for Korean AgTech companies. Because the off-highway market is relatively less standardized than the automotive market, his view is that domestic startups that have already experienced advanced technologies in the passenger vehicle market can gain a sufficient global edge if they enter one step ahead.

He emphasized, “In the past, companies sometimes implemented and used different functions separately, but now even if you want to export, regulatory barriers are being erected that make entry itself impossible unless you meet cybersecurity and functional safety standard certifications,” adding, “Standards are no longer an optional ‘nice-to-have’; without them, you cannot do business—it is a matter of survival.”

Taking into account the nature of the off-highway ecosystem, where it is difficult for a single company alone to compete with global giants, GLINS is currently accelerating platform advancement in cooperation with the government, public institutions, academia, government-funded research institutes, and domestic OEM partners.

Concluding his presentation, Kim Deok-hoon stressed, “Off-highway is a huge quasi-automotive-grade market, and the key to shaking up the global market in the future lies in standards compliance, AI software capabilities, and a strong alliance among Korean OEMs.” Attention is now focused on whether GLINS’s technology-driven strategy can elevate Korea’s agricultural machinery industry into a leading force in the global market.