Mechatronics Hub
The 9th Center for Creative Economy and Innovation officially opened in Gyeongnam on Thursday. South Gyeongsang Province is well known as South Korea’s traditional manufacturing hub. It currently makes up 28 percent of the nation’s total machinery and parts production, and accounts for a quarter of related exports.
The South Korean government has been driving to set up regional creative economy innovation centers across the country to nurture start-ups and associate venture companies with larger companies. South Gyeongsang center, in partnership with the heavy industry giant Doosan Group, aims to lead innovation in Korea’s mechanical engineering sector, playing a key role in revitalizing the nation’s faltering machinery industry and related technological innovations for related technological convergence. Most of all, Doosan plans to offer a total of 120 billion won (US$109 million) by 2020, together with other big businesses to support small and medium-sized firms to develop smart machines and parts.
With Doosan Heavy’s leadership, the Gyeongnam center introduced its main business as follows: constructing a mechatronics hub, promoting the water industry, fostering the anti-aging biotech industry, and systematizing personalized consulting and one-stop services.
Doosan, with its expertise in seawater desalination, plans to foster the center to develop IT solutions for water management systems to turn seawater into fresh water and remotely monitor the water purification course, power plants, and purification equipment. It will also support the export of related systems to overseas markets such as the Middle East, offering new job opportunities for Korean engineers.
Attending the opening ceremony of the Gyeongnam innovation center, President Park expressed her confidence in its role to create and grow future growth engines for the region. Park recognized South Gyeongsang and Changwon Industrial Complex centered in the region as a living history of the nation’s machinery industry that has driven economic growth for decades.
“I believe that the creative fusion between our global leading ICT and a strong manufacturing base here in South Gyeongsang province will produce high value, as this world's manufacturing industry meets a mechatronics revolution which core comes out of the convergence between mechanical engineering and electronics engineering,” said Park.
She pressed that if the center can make a triple convergent revolution of the concepts of inter-business, inter-enterprise, and inter-generation, Gyeongnam will become a mechatronics hub leading to manufacturing innovation 3.0.
An official from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said, “This innovation center will also pave the way for Korea to take an earlier edge in the soaring global water market.”