Korea Institute of Materials Science, a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT, contributed to economic outcomes and social value of related companies through the Comprehensive Company Support Project by investing its own budget. For a total of 9 months from April to December 2021, KIMS implemented the Comprehensive Company Support Project by investing its own research project funds and, on February 28th, held an appraisal meeting to evaluate its results.

KIMS identified that objective business support, demonstration of material industry linking SMEs and large enterprises is the key to reorganizing the international value chain and solving the problems of MPE (materials, parts, and equipment) in accordance with Japan’s export control, and the support project of KIMS is the first case in which the organization's own budget is invested in solving national issues rather than investing in infrastructure for institutional development.

For this project, a total of 16 companies in two fields were selected: for the future new industry innovation technology support, eco-friendly future mobility-related companies in Gyeongnam, such as hydrogen-electric vehicles, e-mobility, secondary batteries, and autonomous driving, which are regional innovative industries were selected; and for the material and parts commercialization support, which are the major fields of KIMS, materials, and parts-related companies were selected.

KIMS provided support for process improvement, new product development, intellectual property rights, and marketing to the selected companies. According to the performance analysis, the project had an economic impact: about 109.1 billion won in new sales from 12 out of 16 companies and about 3.2 billion won in cost savings. In addition, a social achievement occurred in which 48 new workers were hired at 11 companies. KIMS also supported 6 marketing issues and pioneered 1 new market, which is a high level of performance considering the total budget of 600 million won and 9 months of short support.

A CEO of a selected company that mainly produces axles said, “We are supplying axles to major domestic and foreign automobile companies. We went through a difficult situation since Chrysler had requested a complex molding technology for the flange and axle parts. With the help of computational analysis and complex molding process analysis technology of a research team led by Dr. Seong-Hoon Kang at the Department of Materials AI & Big-Data, we succeeded in mass production through mold design and prototype production and laid the foundation for the export of axles.”

Jung-hwan Lee, the President of KIMS, said, “The professional manpower support to solve the technical difficulties of the companies was the key success factor. KIMS will develop the project into a comprehensive support project for providing practical support to the companies by investing the same amount of our research project funds this year as well.”