Seoul Metro Awarded Minister of SMEs and Startups Prize for '2021 Large and Small-Medium Enterprise Win-Win Growth'

Significant Contribution to Introducing 'Performance Sharing System' in Local Public Enterprises for Win-Win with SMEs... Continuous Petition for Legal Amendments... 27 Agreements Since 2016, Over 2 Billion KRW Contracts Achieved Through Development, Consistently Evaluated for Performance

Son Chae-ho, Director of the Urban Railroad Research Institute (left), and Hwang Moon-se, Manager in charge of operations, receiving the award

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] Seoul Metro (President Kim Sang-beom) was recognized for its continuous efforts to coexist with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), including contributions to the introduction of the performance-sharing system, and received the Minister of SMEs and Startups Award at the '2021 Large and Small Business Win-Win Growth Merit Awards' hosted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

This award is given to individuals and organizations that have contributed to enhancing corporate competitiveness and national economic development through win-win cooperation between large and small businesses.

The performance-sharing system is a system where large companies jointly conduct research and development projects such as process improvements or new technology development with SMEs and share the results of such cooperative activities.

Based on the Win-Win Act (Act on the Promotion of Mutual Growth between Large Enterprises and SMEs), it has been implemented for government-invested institutions since 2005, but local public enterprises under local governments, including Seoul Metro, were not subject to its application.

According to the law, public enterprises and quasi-governmental institutions designated by law could use restricted competitive bidding or negotiated contracts if necessary to implement the performance-sharing system, but local public enterprises were not included in the designated subjects by law, making it impossible to implement the system.

Seoul Metro showed its determination to introduce the system by requesting amendments to the Win-Win Act more than 10 times since 2010 to allow local public enterprises to implement the performance-sharing system, and as a result, succeeded in leading the legal amendment in 2016.

After the legal amendment, Seoul Metro became the first local public enterprise to introduce and actively implement the performance-sharing system. Since 2016, it has signed 27 performance-sharing agreements for research and development in the fields of electric trains and technology, completing development on 8 of them and signing contracts worth about 2.2 billion KRW with small and medium-sized partner companies to share the results.

Representative cases of research and development through the performance-sharing system include mobile services for transportation-vulnerable groups, localization of electric train parts, and development of platform screen door control parts.

For example, in the localization of electric train parts, when key components of the TCMS (Train Control and Monitoring System), a core device of Line 7 and 8 electric trains, were discontinued and could no longer be imported, Seoul Metro used the performance-sharing system to jointly develop alternative parts with SMEs.

As a result, the development was successful, producing a total of 105 units (worth about 860 million KRW) which were installed on the electric trains.

Son Chae-ho, Director of the Urban Railway Research Institute at Seoul Metro, said, “As ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) management has recently emerged as an important issue, Seoul Metro is continuously carrying out activities to create a sustainable society, including coexistence with SMEs. We are pleased to receive good evaluations as the introduction of the performance-sharing system is part of these efforts, and we will continue to pursue steady research, development, and mutual growth with SMEs in the future.”

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