The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Ministry of Intellectual Property said on the 16th that they began work to establish the "2026 smart manufacturing strategic technology roadmap (2027–2029)" to build an artificial intelligence (AI)-based smart manufacturing ecosystem and strengthen the competitiveness of small manufacturing corporations.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) operated technology-innovation and on-site demand tracks last year around seven strategic areas of smart manufacturing and derived 49 strategic items. This year, in line with the AI-based Smart Manufacturing 3.0 strategy, it plans to expand the scope of analysis to the special classification system of the smart manufacturing technology industry and increase the number of strategic items to more than 100.
This project is the first case of collaboration between the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) and the intellectual property agency in the field of smart manufacturing. The plan is to systematically identify future promising technologies by linking on-site demand from small manufacturing corporations with patent big data analysis.
The intellectual property agency will support analyses of global patent trends, technology competition structures, and promising technology fields through an industry innovation support project based on patent big data. It is expected to enable an objective assessment of technological competitiveness and growth potential in smart manufacturing.
Practical operations will be handled by the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA) and the Korea Intellectual Property Strategy Agency (KISTA). TIPA is responsible for industry and technology analysis and deriving strategic items, while KISTA supports technology analysis based on patent big data.
Through this roadmap, the two agencies will provide strategic information to smart-manufacturing suppliers and demand-side corporations, and plan to use it to establish strategies for future research and development investment, technology commercialization, and entry into global markets.
Kwon Sun-jae, regional corporations policy director at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS), said, "By collaborating with the intellectual property agency, we will enhance the objectivity and expertise in identifying smart-manufacturing strategic technologies and create a roadmap that can lead to actionable technology and development (R&D) for small manufacturing corporations."
Kim Il-gyu, director general of intellectual property policy at the Ministry of Intellectual Property, noted, "Patent big data, which contains the latest global technology trends, is a key asset for forecasting future technological competitiveness and indicating the direction of R&D," adding, "We will support the identification of strategic technologies in smart manufacturing and the establishment of national research and development policies through patent big data analysis."