Two Years of Building Win-Win Smart Factories... Driving Digital Transformation for 690 SMEs

KCCI Publishes 2020 Win-Win Smart Factory Best Practices Collection
Hyundai Motor, LG Electronics, POSCO, and 11 Major Companies Support 690 Partner Smart Factories Over 2 Years

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) announced on the 26th that it has published the "2020 Large, Medium, and Small Enterprise Win-Win Smart Factory Best Practices Collection," which contains the achievements of companies participating in the Large, Medium, and Small Enterprise Win-Win Smart Factory Construction Support Project.

This best practices collection was created to introduce the Large, Medium, and Small Enterprise Win-Win Smart Factory Support Project to companies and to share the project outcomes and exemplary company cases over the past two years.

The Large, Medium, and Small Enterprise Win-Win Smart Factory Construction Support Project is a government initiative that supports part of the construction costs when large enterprises and their small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) partners jointly build smart factories. When SMEs and mid-sized companies build smart factories that apply advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data to automate and digitize the entire process from product planning and design to production, distribution, and sales, they receive support covering more than 60% of the total project cost through a combination of contributions from large enterprises and government subsidies.

Contributing companies such as Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors, Hyundai Mobis, LG Electronics, POSCO, Doosan, Korea Midland Power, Korea Western Power, Korea Gas Corporation, Korea South-East Power, and Korea Industrial Complex Corporation have been supporting the construction of Large, Medium, and Small Enterprise Win-Win Smart Factories since 2019 in collaboration with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups to foster partner companies, promote co-growth between large and small-medium enterprises, and enhance manufacturing innovation capabilities.

In the first year of the project, which ran until 2020, a budget of 14.3 billion KRW was raised, including 8.5 billion KRW from large enterprise contributions and 5.8 billion KRW from government support, enabling the construction of smart factories in 361 companies. In the second year, currently underway in 2021, the project scale is 15 billion KRW, supporting 329 companies.

High Achievements Including 18.7% Productivity Improvement

SMEs and mid-sized companies participating in the Win-Win Smart Factory Construction Support Project have achieved favorable results. A survey of the 361 companies involved in the first year showed an average productivity improvement of 18.7%.

The satisfaction rate with project participation reached 88.1%, and 78.4% of respondents answered positively when asked whether they were able to secure Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competitiveness through participation. Additionally, 65% of participating companies expressed their intention to voluntarily continue building smart factories even after the project ends.

Woo Tae-hee, Executive Vice Chairman of KCCI and Co-Head of the Central Promotion Headquarters for the Industrial Innovation Movement, stated, "The Large, Medium, and Small Enterprise Win-Win Smart Factory Construction Support Project is distinguished by building smart factories tailored to the field of SMEs and mid-sized companies based on active support from large enterprises." He added, "As ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management becomes the new normal across the industry, this project, which promotes co-growth with partner companies and fulfills corporate social responsibility, is expected to become even more active in the future."

The best practices collection can be viewed on the Industrial Innovation Movement website.

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