World Economic Forum held in early June 2016 highlighted the importance of transitioning towards a digital economy to be competitive for the next 25 years. As a closely related topic, the 4th Industrial Revolution was discussed extensively.

The Republic of Korea has launched several initiatives to turn the 4th Industrial Revolution into such an opportunity. For example, the government founded the Presidential Committee on the 4th Industrial Revolution including Smart Factory  which is a production facility that is hyper connected and digitalized to raise productivity with factory automation and manufacturing innovation and has drafted an overarching strategy to enhance our 4th Industrial Revolution readiness. The Korean government is also making concerted efforts to support technology development, to promote education and to ensure new advances in technology become widely adopted.

This project aims to provide opportunities for APEC and relative economies to share technology, market, knowledge and information in terms of Smart Factory with general point of view in order to be easily approached through all APEC economies for SMEs and MSME including Startups.

In this context, Republic of Korea proposes to hold a 2-day ‘2020 APEC SMEs Smart Factory Forum’ in 2020 to identify the manufacturing digitalization that SMEs and MSMEs in APEC region are facing now and share useful knowledge of the latest trends of Smart Factory so that a safe and sound business ecosystem can be thrived in the region with reciprocal and sustainable growth.