‘Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center’, which will play a role of an outpost for manufacturing innovation of local small and medium companies, will be in operation on full-scale at 19 Techno Parks in South Korea. It will be a center that will provide omnidirectional support on application of Smart Factory, education, follow-up management, and technical development. Each center will have personnel who retired from major corporations and these personnel will pass down their knowhow on adopting Smart Factory.
Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) announced that it will hold a signboard hanging ceremony for Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center at all 19 Techno Parks starting from Daegu and Gyeongbuk region. Businessmen related to Smart Factory, directors of local ministries of SMEs and startups, directors of Techno Parks, and representatives from local government bodies will attend signboard hanging ceremonies and discuss about different ways for local manufacturing innovation.
Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center will combine different capabilities from local government bodies, Techno Parks, and local companies and provide support on consulting, education, technical development and others. It is a part of ‘Small and Medium Business Smart Manufacturing Innovation Strategy’ announced by South Korean Government last year and it will provide support for small and medium businesses that face many difficulties with establishing Smart Factories.
It will manage every process involving Smart Factory from start to finish and it will operate testbeds for solutions to enhance manufacturing technologies and to use them for technical development and certification.
A testbed that can be used for major industries such as shipbuilding materials industry and automatic part industry in Busan will be set up by end of this year. MSS’ plan is to increase success rate of Smart Factories by local small and medium companies by improving vision examination system, Smart work order system, Smart inventory management system.
MSS will select 100 Smart Meisters and place them at Innovation Centers starting from March. It will sign 6-months labor contract with them and support about 200 companies that are looking to establish Smart Factories or to improve their Smart Factories. These Smart Meisters will reside with these companies for about 3 months and they will pass down their knowhow and solve any difficulty with establishing Smart Factories.
South Korean Government is currently looking to establish 30,000 Smart Factories by 2022. Its goal for this year is to have 4,000 Smart Factories. To have small and medium companies to properly establish Smart Factories, it increased its financial support for new Smart Factories and upgrade on current Smart Factories to $89,000 (100 million KRW) and $124,000 (150 million KRW) respectively.
It also simplified application and selection procedures to provide faster support with Smart Factor. Selection process that used to take 5 weeks now only takes 2 weeks. South Korean Government is also allowing companies to participate in Smart Factory project twice annually.
“To increase accessibility of local small and medium businesses that are interested in Smart Factory, we have decided to set up Smart Manufacturing Innovation Centers at 19 Techno Parks.” said a representative for MSS. “We are going to work with South Korean Government and other local governments to increase number of testbeds that are specialized locally.”
Staff Reporter Park, Jungeun | jepark@etnews.com