Industry, Academia, and Research Institutes Join Hands for Smart Reshoring

Launch of the Fair Innovation Task Force (TF)

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Cheol-hyun] Industry, academia, and research experts gathered in one place to revitalize domestic reshoring of overseas expansion companies. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Park Young-sun, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry) announced on the 13th that it launched the 'Process Innovation Task Force (TF)' at the LW Convention in Jung-gu, Seoul, and will actively promote smart reshoring through process automation.

The Process Innovation TF was launched as a follow-up to the 'SoBuJang 2.0 Strategy' and the 'AI·Data-based SME Manufacturing Innovation Advancement Strategy' announced last July, and operates under a private joint team leader system centered on Park Han-gu, Head of the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Group, and Professor Maeng Soo-seok of Chungnam National University to enhance private sector autonomy. Under the TF, there are three subcommittees in the fields of automobile, electrical and electronics, and root·daily life. When the subcommittees discover a preliminary list of reshoring items, the TF divides roles by confirming items according to priority from the list.

The TF plans to discover more than 30 reshoring items by the end of this year, considering corporate demand to increase the likelihood of reshoring success. The Ministry will support process innovation technology development (R&D) that converts labor-intensive processes of reshoring items into automated processes and, based on this, will provide follow-up support such as smart factories and manufacturing robots to reshoring companies to activate smart reshoring. In particular, to create success cases, three urgent automation process implementation tasks will be selected and pilot technical development support will begin in the second half of the year. The Ministry also announced plans to significantly increase the support fund per project from the current level of 200 million KRW to up to 1 billion KRW to improve complex manual processes.

Cha Jeong-hoon, Director of the Startup Venture Innovation Office at the Ministry, said, "The global division of labor is being shaken as factories in emerging countries stopped due to COVID-19," adding, "If we join forces with the private sector to convert existing manual processes into advanced automated and smart processes, reshoring will be revitalized, and Korea can become a global factory again." Director Cha also emphasized, "We will activate smart reshoring by providing linked support for smart factories and manufacturing robots to ease the burden of facility investment such as new factory expansions for reshoring companies."

Park Han-gu, Head of the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Promotion Group, said, "We plan to explore the possibility of process improvement with experts from various fields and communicate closely with the industry to ensure that the results of technology development can spread early," adding, "We will create success cases by leveraging 36 years of experience in process automation and smartization gained in the private sector."