Government to spur advanced Smart Factories for Small and Medium Businesses by fostering smart manufacturing infrastructure and workers

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced "job improvement results and future directions through smart manufacturing innovation for SMEs" at the "The 22nd Job Committee" on December 22 to enhance the competitiveness of SMEs and create good jobs.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to actively promote manpower training along with upgrading smart factories and expanding data-based smart manufacturing infrastructure next year as smart manufacturing innovation creates results such as enhanced corporate competitiveness and an improved working environment.

In particular, the government plans to focus on upgrading intelligent factories (smart factories) by supporting cooperative districts (cluster) units and expanding leading models in consideration of value chains.

To this end, the government will actively promote advanced models such as △ Digital Cooperation District (cluster) (100 sites by 2025), △ K-Lighthouse Factory (100 by 2025), and △ Carbon Neutral Smart Factory and will continue to provide maintenance services for effective utilization in the enterprise field.

In addition, in order to enhance the technology of suppliers, three key technologies for smart manufacturing, such as △ high-tech manufacturing, △ flexible production, and △ on-site technology, will be developed and a solution store in the KAMP will be established.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups also plans to build 50 standard models of △ artificial intelligence (by 2024) and test-run the △ My Manufacturing Data Platform to realize smart manufacturing based on △ manufacturing data, share, utilize, and trade.

Especially, it is a project initiated by Europe to secure data sovereignty and self-determination and plans to actively participate in GAIA-X, which is being promoted as an international norm for sharing manufacturing data such as establishing rules and technology (infrastructure) necessary for data interconnection and enact the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Act.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to train professional operating personnel for smart factories and accelerate workplace innovation.

Through training for incumbent and new employees, the government will continue to train 100,000 smart manufacturers (by 2022), and foster 3,000 experts (by 2025) in artificial intelligence (AI) convergence talents and suppliers.

For the management of artificial intelligence smart factories, the government plans to establish a new △ manufacturing data facilitator training project to foster experts in data management and on-site problem-solving.

In addition, strengthening the link between follow-up management and workplace innovation (Ministry of Employment), will improve the way of companies work and increase the utilization of smart technologies.

Kwon Chil-seung, the minister of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, "The results through smart manufacturing innovation are visible, and we have been able to see the effect of improving job quality through the better working environment as well as corporate growth." "We will speed up pushing for the tasks included in this agenda for the continuing growth of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies."

Reported by Smart City Today