Jakarta (VNA) - The Indonesian government has received a grant of 5.5 million USD from the Republic of Korea (RoK) to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The grant is in the form of collaboration on smart factory adoption and training for human resources.

Deputy for Small and Medium Enterprises (UKM) of the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, Hanung Harimba Rachman, stated that the Official Development Assistance Project (ODA) collaboration between the Indonesian and the RoK governments aimed at helping local SMEs adopt the industrial ecosystem 4.0 to enter the industrial supply chain.

He noted this is a collaborative step to help SMEs in adopting the industrial ecosystem 4.0, applying smart factories, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to enter the manufacturing industry supply chain. This is an important step, especially since the RoK is superior in Indonesia’s manufacturing industry.

Rachman revealed that under this project, 30 SMEs will be recommended by the ministry to receive training on adopting smart factories at universities. In addition, training will be conducted for 100 experts on smart factory operations through a collaboration that will last for the next four years. The programme targeted SMEs in the automotive, manufacturing, food and beverage, textile, electronics, chemical, and agricultural sectors.

Meanwhile, Policy Head of INNOBIZ Institute, Se-jong Kim, explained that a smart factory service center will be built at the Indonesian university to facilitate the programme with the training curriculum.

He said that the institute has built 30,000 smart factories in the RoK and hoped that the programme can increase SMEs' capacity in Indonesia and the collaboration with INNOBIZ can assist the Indonesian government in developing schemes, research, and policies related to SME certification in accordance with the business ecosystem in Indonesia./.