Trade, Industry and Energy 1st Vice Minister Jang Young-jin held a CTO Roundtable on April 10 at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and announced the launching of the “Super Gap Project for Industrial Transformation.”
The roundtable was attended by the heads of four relevant institutes and CTOs of nine companies, namely LX Semicon, Samsung Display, Hyundai Motor, POSCO, Yujin Robot, LG Innotek, L&F, Hanwha Aerospace and CJ CheilJedang.
The Super Gap Project is a Government project for nurturing super gap growth of domestic industries and realigning the R&D system towards a goal-oriented, outcome-driven one, while shaping investment directions and support mechanisms for achieving the 12 national strategic technologies and the New Growth Strategy 4.0.
The Super Gap Project will be pushed in the following three directions.
First, the public and private sectors will determine clear goals and investment directions for each area and concentrate investment on selective strategic projects.
Concerns had been raised thus far that the Government’s R&D investment directions are unclear, and that most projects and tasks tend to simply “jump on the bandwagon”. To address this issue, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), together with relevant firms, expert groups and thinktanks, has selected 40 projects to achieve 34 missions across 11 core investment areas.
The 11 investment areas are semiconductor, displays, secondary batteries, future mobility, core materials, intelligent robots, high-tech manufacturing, aerospace & defense, next-generation nuclear energy, high-tech bio and new energy industries.
In the case of semiconductors, three missions and four projects have been selected. To execute the first mission (“High-Tech System Chip Powerhouse”), two projects will be launched: 1) the development of compound power semiconductors for mobility, energy and home appliance, and 2) the development of autonomous vehicle (level 4 autonomy or higher) semiconductor technology.
For the second mission (“Nurturing the Global Top 10 Post-Processing Companies”), the project of developing foundation technology for high-tech semiconductor packaging has been selected for launch.
For the third mission (“Bolstering Semiconductor Supply Chains to Maintain Super Gap Competitiveness”), a mini-fab will be established for early commercial demonstrations of 12-inch high-tech semiconductor wafer MPEs (materials, parts and equipment).
Approximately 70 percent of the new R&D annual budget will be poured into selected projects. Through prefeasibility studies and new project sourcing, KRW 6.2 trillion and 13.5 trillion won will be invested by 2027 and 2030, respectively.
Second, project management authority will be granted to top market and industry experts.
Previously, a project was overseen and planned out by a single program director per business category, whose role ended once the planning stage was completed with no one remaining to oversee the entire process.
However, all phases of the Super Gap Project will be overseen by not only the program director but also by a group of project managers consisting of market and industry experts that will engage in setting project goals, technology development, personnel training and outcome evaluation.
Once the project management group is formed, details of the plan will be further established with respect to setting goals, project organization and milestones.
Third, R&D support structures will be changed so that institutions with superior innovation capabilities can spearhead the project and undertake responsibilities on a greater scale.
Past R&D projects were composed of numerous, small-scale tasks in which various entities executed their respective tasks, and were criticized for meagre project outcomes in contrast with the comparable success of individual tasks.
Super Gap Projects will be advanced in the form of singular, large-scale projects rather than each being split into smaller elements. Institutions with superior innovation capabilities can form the optimal consortium and align all component technologies for development and evaluation to create tangible outcomes.
Nine companies and four institutes that attended the roundtable signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the Super Gap Project execution. Companies will be actively engaging in the project manager group, while a strategic planning group is to support the management of a technological innovation alliance.
Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) and Korea Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) will assist the project manager group, and Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) will assist the personnel training and foundation projects.
Vice Minister Jang stressed that fragmented, small-scale projects run by a handful of experts can neither produce significant outcomes nor outperform rivals in the technology race, and stated that the Ministry will “establish an R&D system in which Korea’s top experts can offer guidance and innovation-leading institutes can form a ‘dream team’ to create substantial outcomes.”