FKI Publishes Best Practice Guide for SME Consulting... "Driving Win-Win Growth Between Large and Small Businesses"

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki-min Lee] The Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) Small and Medium Business Cooperation Center announced on the 28th that it has published the '2020 FKI Management Advisory Group Small and Medium Business Advisory Best Practices Collection,' a casebook of management performance from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) advised by its affiliated management advisory group.

Since 2004, FKI has been helping to resolve management difficulties for about 25,000 SMEs. This casebook mainly includes companies among approximately 620 firms in sectors such as semiconductors, construction, food, furniture, distribution, startups, and foreign companies under FKI that have overcome management challenges like sales expansion, cost reduction, and market development, achieving significant results.

One of the representative management performance improvement cases selected in the casebook is ORKEM Co., Ltd., a chemical manufacturer supplying products to domestic and international semiconductor printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers. Despite the COVID-19 crisis, the company reduced costs by about 200 million KRW through productivity improvements, and both sales and operating profit increased by 17% each compared to the previous year.

The company implemented solutions advised by technical veterans Young-deok Kim and Hyuk-jae Jeong, who previously worked at Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Samsung Corning. The two advisors recommended reducing overtime hours and improving equipment utilization rates to cut costs, and suggested digitizing codes and improving delivery times to reduce inventory for productivity enhancement. They also set goals based on key performance indicators for each department and monitored achievement.

Speedrack, which manufactures boltless ultra-simple assembly angles, developed new products and launched them on home shopping and online shopping malls, exporting to 15 countries, resulting in a 30% increase in sales this year compared to the previous year. Prior to this, Speedrack established dedicated research and development (R&D) and marketing teams for new product development and promotion based on advice from advisor Byung-ki Lee, formerly of Hi-Mart Logistics. They also built a 7,000-pyeong smart factory equipped with digital packing systems to upgrade customer support systems. They are focusing on online marketing next year with the goal of entering Amazon.

Kwon Tae-shin, Vice Chairman of FKI and Chairman of the FKI SME Center, stated, "As seen in these excellent cases, FKI plays a leading role in the co-growth of large and small-medium enterprises by transferring large companies' business success know-how and crisis management experiences to SMEs through the management advisory group." He added, "Considering the recent high demand for advisory services in certain fields among SMEs, we plan to increase the number of advisory committee members."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.