Korea Federation of SMEs Conducts 2024 First 'Manufacturing Innovation Excellent Company Benchmarking'

The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business (Kbiz) organized an event to share the success know-how of manufacturing innovation outstanding companies.

On the 17th, Kbiz announced that it conducted the '2024 1st Small and Medium Enterprise Manufacturing Innovation Outstanding Company Benchmarking' by visiting Yuhan Hoesa Wijeseu, an excellent company in smart factory construction located in Iksan, Jeonbuk.

The scene of the '2024 1st Small and Medium Business Manufacturing Innovation Excellent Company Benchmarking' held on the 16th in Wije-se, Iksan, Jeonbuk. (Photo by Korea Federation of SMEs)

The 'Small and Medium Enterprise Manufacturing Innovation Outstanding Company Benchmarking' is a project promoted by Kbiz to foster a ‘virtuous cycle growth’ where the SME sector can be stimulated and grow together by discovering and spreading best practices of companies that have improved management environments or innovated technology and processes. Starting this year, the plan is to visit manufacturing innovation outstanding companies by region (Capital area, Yeongnam area, Honam area, Chungcheong area) to share manufacturing innovation success stories and create a forum for discussion.

About 30 people attended the benchmarking event, including Park Byeong-mo, Chairman of Jeonbuk Furniture, Lee Gi-jung, full-time director of agricultural machinery, and executives and employees of local SME cooperatives and member companies.

Wijeseu, a producer of agricultural machinery tractor cabins, overcame difficulties caused by low-price competition from Chinese companies in 2015 by receiving support from the 'Large-Small Win-Win Smart Factory Support Project' promoted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, Kbiz, and Samsung Electronics, which helped from innovation activities at manufacturing sites to the establishment of automation systems.

Through continuous participation in the project from 2016 to 2022 and the advancement of its smart factory, Wijeseu achieved a 42% increase in productivity and a 60% improvement in sales, recently surpassing 10 billion KRW in sales, becoming a leading domestic agricultural equipment company.

Additionally, Wijeseu launched the 'Jeonbuk-Samsung Smart CEO Forum' in 2023, the nation’s first private-led smart factory expansion council, together with smart factory participating companies in the province to spread and share innovation achievements with local SMEs. Acting as a ‘private mentor group,’ it supports manufacturing innovation of SMEs in the province by sharing smart factory success cases and know-how.

Jung Byung-gyu, CEO of Wijeseu, said, “The company was once in a management crisis, but now it has become solid enough to challenge its highest sales. Thanks to the smart factory support project, we gained confidence that we can survive, so I hope local SMEs actively participate in the smart factory support project and achieve results.”

Jeon Eui-jun, Director of the Smart Industry Office at Kbiz, said, “The 'Small and Medium Enterprise Manufacturing Innovation Outstanding Case Benchmarking' is meaningful in that it can spread smart factory achievements at the private level and establish a voluntary virtuous cycle system. We will continue to promote benchmarking of outstanding cases with SME cooperatives by similar industries and regions so that many SMEs can achieve innovation and results.”