KAI practices win-win management to establish transparent
and fair business relations with partners.
KAI provides 100 billion won of loan interest support for investment and working capital through agreements with Gyeongsangnam-do and the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency. As of 2023, KAI has provided 34.3 billion won of loan interest support to a total of 33 small and medium-sized enterprises.
KAI has expanded its own emergency operating fund for supplies experiencing temporary business crises by doubling the total amount from 10 billion won to 20 billion won and increasing the limit per company from 1 billion won to 2 billion won, and has so far provided a total of 36 billion won to 21 companies by easing loan conditions, including new loans for each company.
In order to support small and medium-sized enterprises in borrowing funds, KAI donated funds of 180 million won from the Collaborative Cooperation Fund to provide loan guarantees of up to 3 billion won per company, and guaranteed loans of 2.7 billion won to three companies.
To help suppliers normalize their business after the prolonged COVID-19 downturn, KAI provided emergency financial support for unit price increases and business loss compensation in 2020, 2022, and 2024 worth approximately 30 billion won.
KAI donated 2.5 billion won per year (2020–2023) to create a fund of 10 billion won over four years to support the improvement of work welfare and quality of life for more than 5,000 employees of 40 suppliers, including gifts for holidays and anniversaries and support for clubs and sports events, through matching funds from local governments, large companies (KAI), and small and medium-sized enterprises.
This is a project to induce long-term employment of key personnel of suppliers through an agreement with the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency. The first project was supported with 330,000 won per person per month and about 25 million won over five years, and 67 employees from 15 companies were supported. Beginning in 2024, the scale of support has been expanded, and as a second project, Gyeongsangnam-do, KAI, suppliers, and employees have jointly supported the creation of 480,000 won per person per month and approximately 30 million won over five years.
KAI rewards up to 100 million won to suppliers that achieve excellent performance through regular suppliers evaluations each year, and the rewards are given directly to the suppliers' employees. In addition, KAI operates the "Win-Win Proposal System" for suppliers, which measures the grade of innovation proposals and provides performance payments according to the grade, and shares excellent improvement tasks with suppliers through the "Innovation Activity Reporting Meeting" to accelerate the establishment of a sustainable and independent innovation culture.
In October 2020, following the Ministry of Employment and Labor's launch of the nation's first "Regionspecific Pilot Project on Emergency Vocational Training" in Gyeongsangnam-do, KAI conducted paid leave training for idle workers in collaboration with Korea Polytechnics (Jinju Campus) under the regionspecific long-term paid leave training project, which has become a full-fledged business in 2022. In total, about 5,500 people completed the training, and with the support of Gyeongsangnam-do, the Ministry of Labor and Employment, and the local government, approximately 13.2 billion won in labor costs and 50% of social insurance premiums were provided to help suppliers maintain employment through COVID-19.
In order to solve the labor shortage of our suppliers and to secure overseas aircraft parts manufacturing experts, KAI recommended the establishment of the E-7-3 visa for specific activities to the Ministry of Justice, and on January 4, 2024, the new occupation of "aircraft parts manufacturer" was confirmed and officially implemented on May 1, 2024.
Since 2022, KAI has been organizing the "Aerospace Job Fair" every year together with Sacheon City and other related organizations, and during the job fair, KAI is making every effort to secure domestic talent by holding a briefing session on the vision of the aerospace manufacturing industry hosted by KAI for job seekers.
In line with global SCM standardization, supply chain ESG risk management is being emphasized at KAI's major customers, Boeing and Airbus, due to the trend of strengthening supply chain ESG risk management worldwide. Therefore, in order to preemptively respond to supply chain ESG management, KAI implemented the “Suppliers ESG Consulting Pilot Project" in 2023 using the Collaborative Cooperation Fund to provide ESG education, due diligence diagnosis, consulting, and monitoring of improvement activities to 10 suppliers.
To realize manufacturing innovation through specialized integrated production, KAI is promoting the “Aircraft Parts Integrated Production Infrastructure," an aviation-specific project to ensure global competitiveness. KAI plans to build a smart-based efficient production complex for unplanned integrated production using batch production lines, smart factories using digital twins, and a sharing economy as the basic concept. To realize this project, it has been selected as a multi-year research task (Korea Industrial Complex Corporation) in 2023 and 2024, and KAI plans to form an industry-university-institute council with KAI, Korea Industrial Complex Corporation, suppliers, and specialized institutions to study and realize the project.
In order to continue the development of aviation technology and industry in the Republic of Korea, KAI has been operating joint training centers (since 2015), starting with 57 sites in 2015 and expanding to 200 sites in 2024, and has trained more than 7,000 people to date. Through partner demand surveys, KAI develops training courses needed by partners and provides systematic training support measures to strengthen partners' technical competitiveness. KAI is showing clear results in human resource development in the aviation industry, including receiving the highest grade in the 2022 National Human Resource Development Consortium Performance Evaluation.