[Sponsored Report] KOGAS aims to help its partners

KOGAS executives hold a shared-growth meeting. Provided by KOGAS

KOGAS is planning to improve its social responsibility as a public company and expand its purchase of products from small and medium size companies as well as reviewing various ways to practice “shared-growth management”. In December 2010 KOGAS created the “Small and Medium Size Company Support Team” to manage and promote the activities it undertakes to support small and medium size companies.

Currently KOGAS is undertaking large-scale construction projects such as extra-high voltage gas pipelines and LNG storage tanks.

Small and medium size companies face difficulty participating in such projects due to the scale of the construction but the company is increasing the opportunities for small construction companies to participate in projects like this and is purchasing construction materials and technology development products directly from small companies.

KOGAS is also working on purchasing 500 million won worth of localization development products from small and medium sized companies.

The company is continuously working to have local technology developed to replace the current production parts that are imported.

To increase the support to the small and medium scale companies KOGAS has increased the advanced payment rate from the current 30-50 percent to 40-70 percent.

The company is also reinforcing cooperative research and development and technology development efforts and looking for a way to support small and medium sized companies. In addition, to improve the productivity and human resource technology of the small and medium size companies, KOGAS is planning to hold a job education course twice a year after conducting an educational needs survey within the companies.

KOGAS is also planning more R&D tasks to better support small and medium size companies in technology development cooperation projects and to support technology development more efficiently it is planning to create an efficient promoting system. KOGAS employees will visit the sites of cooperative companies once a month and listen to their problems as well as operating a “KOGAS small and medium size company support Web site” to provide more information for companies and to list to their needs. There is also a plan to adapt the shared-growth incentive system. By creating a bond of understanding for shared-growth management and by systematizing the operation system of supporting for the companies, the company will improve the effectiveness of its supporting activities. Also by setting up guidelines in management, it will thoroughly review any conflict of interest from the subcontractors and promote methods that will have a positive effect.

KOGAS believes its role, and that of other public organizations, is to support small and medium sized companies through rational support so they can develop into large companies and later into global companies.