The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Oh Young-joo, hereinafter referred to as MSS) and the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Team (Director Ahn Gwang-hyun, hereinafter referred to as the Promotion Team) under the Small and Medium Business Technology Information Promotion Agency announced on the 9th that they held a Smart Manufacturing Policy Innovation Roundtable with companies and experts at Seoul Square to discuss ways to enhance the competitiveness of small and medium-sized manufacturers in the era of artificial intelligence technology innovation.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups is operating a roundtable to discuss policy directions with experts from industry and academia to enhance manufacturing innovation and competitiveness of small and medium-sized manufacturers by utilizing artificial intelligence and manufacturing data standards starting from 2025.
This roundtable was organized to discuss policy directions for enhancing the competitiveness of small and medium-sized manufacturers in the era of AI technology innovation, and was attended by approximately 40 people, including AI technology experts in the manufacturing field, industry, academia, and support organizations.
As artificial intelligence technology is rapidly developing from generative AI to agentic AI* and physical AI**, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups is researching ways to utilize and spread innovative artificial intelligence technology in small and medium-sized manufacturing sites.
In addition, as a follow-up measure to the ‘Smart Manufacturing Innovation Ecosystem Creation Plan’ announced at the Economic Ministers’ Meeting on October 2nd last year, we are currently studying the ‘Smart Manufacturing Specialized Company Designation System Introduction Plan’ together with the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade. Based on the results, we plan to promote the enactment of the ‘Smart Manufacturing Industry Promotion Act’ to systematically foster smart manufacturing specialized companies and establish a support base for balanced development of each sector of the smart manufacturing industry.
On this day, Kim Ju-mi, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for SMEs and Startups, presented on the current status of artificial intelligence utilization by manufacturing SMEs based on the analysis results of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' artificial intelligence solution verification support project.
Senior Researcher Kim said, “While global manufacturing companies are already actively utilizing AI in various fields, domestic small and medium-sized manufacturing companies are still introducing it only in some areas of the product production value chain.” He continued, “There is a need to expand the application of AI to the entire forward and backward value chain of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, and also diversify the areas of application.”
Sang-Hyeon Lee, head of the Digital and AI Transformation Ecosystem Research Lab at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, presented the results of a survey on the current status of the domestic and international specialized company designation system, as well as the necessity, operation direction, and expected effects of the specialized company designation system from the perspectives of technology supply and demand companies.
Research Director Lee Sang-hyun said, “It has been found that the introduction of a specialized company designation system in the smart manufacturing industry has had a great positive effect, such as securing reliability between supply and demand companies and increasing the possibility of stable collaboration. Since the fields that make up the smart manufacturing industry are diverse by product and service, it is essential to establish specialized company designation requirements that fit the characteristics of the industry, while also establishing an incentive system that can encourage specialized companies to voluntarily strengthen their capabilities.”
Academic experts expressed the view that Korea, a manufacturing powerhouse, has a suitable environment for inducing manufacturing innovation using AI technology and has high potential for development because it can secure manufacturing data from various industries. However, there is a lack of solutions that small and medium-sized manufacturing companies can easily utilize, it is not easy to find AI talent to work in small and medium-sized manufacturing sites, and there are concerns about trade secret leaks and insufficient data standards, so they said that government-level attention and support are needed to resolve the practice of avoiding the disclosure of manufacturing data for AI model development.
In relation to the introduction of the smart manufacturing specialized company designation system, companies representing the fields of automation devices such as robots, information solutions, and intelligent services who attended the meeting evaluated that fostering smart manufacturing specialized companies, which is a promising growth field in the era of AI technology innovation, is timely. They hoped that a supplier capacity diagnosis system that reflects the characteristics of each industry and a standard for designating specialized companies would be established, and that a growth ladder policy would be established for companies that do not meet the selection criteria.
Kwon Soon-jae, director of the Manufacturing Innovation Division at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, “AI technology is becoming increasingly important as a new opportunity for innovation in the manufacturing sector and as a key basic element technology.” He added, “The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will do its best to establish policies to increase accessibility to and utilization of AI technology for small and medium-sized manufacturers and maximize the strengths of Korea’s smart manufacturing industry ecosystem in cooperation with SMEs and academia.”
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to hold a roundtable in late April on the development trends of AAS standard reference models by representative process and the direction of the strategic technology roadmap for new smart manufacturing R&D 2.0 plans.
- See more related articles
You must be logged in to post a comment.