A pilot project to introduce multi-AI agents to manufacturing sites of small and medium-sized enterprises has officially launched. This marks the first step in verifying how AI agents can support process decision-making across major manufacturing sectors, including food, beauty, automotive parts, and metal processing.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Han Seong-sook, hereinafter the Ministry) announced on the 29th that it held a 'Multi AI Agent Demonstration Project Launch Meeting Specializing in Small and Medium-sized Manufacturing Companies' at the Pulmuone Foods Eumseong Factory in North Chungcheong Province. About 30 people, including representatives from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Korea Technology Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (hereinafter KTIPI), 12 selected project implementing organizations, and demand companies, attended the meeting to discuss the direction of applying AI agents to manufacturing sites.

Application scenarios by sector were shared at the event.

Food manufacturing company Izera plans to verify a structure in which an AI agent analyzes process and product conditions and predicts quality risks in processes where quality variations occur depending on raw material status and process conditions.

The demand company is Pulmuone Foods.

Kairos Lab, a beauty manufacturing company, shared a scenario in which AI agents are utilized throughout the entire cycle of multi-product, small-batch production, ranging from formulation design to quality control, processes, regulatory review, and clinical efficacy prediction.

The demand companies are △IEC Korea △Intercos Korea △ActiveOn △NutriAdvisor, a total of 4 companies.

The 12 selected projects will use manufacturing site data over the next six months to verify the operation of AI agents, field usability, and scalability of subsequent R&D.

In the Proof of Concept (PoC) phase, the focus is on verifying the operability of the AI agent and its ability to support decision-making for field workers and managers, rather than on the finished product.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to manage demonstration projects in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Study to ensure they lead to results in the field through data quality verification, linkage with national GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) infrastructure, and support from dedicated committee members.

Kwon Soon-jae, Director General of Regional Enterprise Policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, stated, “Through this project, we will verify AI models applicable to small and medium-sized manufacturing sites and provide support to expand the results to major manufacturing sectors such as food, beauty, automotive parts, and metal processing.”