Partner story | Meet KMA
Meet KMA, our Korean partner. A non-profit active for more than 50 years, KMA is making great strides in sustainability adaptation and alignment throughout Korea.
Meeting client needs since 1962
To help strengthen Korean industry, Korea Management Association (KMA) formed more than 50 years ago. “Our goal is to provide knowledge to burgeoning Korean companies,” explained Kim Sung Tak, general manager of consulting business at KMA.
That knowledge encompasses every aspect of client needs, from “training, development, and consulting, to software and diagnosis,” Kim told us. KMA was created to assist every type of worker, “from the new employee to the CEO,” Kim explained.
The nonprofit organization has served more than 1,000 members over the past 50 years, from large companies like Samsung and Hyundai, to governments, associations, research institutes, and more.
In particular, KMA has become quite known for their CEO service, a monthly seminar that has been taking place for 40 years, as well as their management awards, for categories including quality, human resources, and more. KMA’s Green Management Board helps clients to grow responsibly, while energy efficiency and environmental safety are key components of KMA’s Management Quality and Maintenance Management divisions.
“The future model of business is developing an innovative and creative company through endless changes,” said Kim. “KMA provides the blueprint to our many members throughout Korea of how to get there, sustainably.”
Twenty years of togetherness
A common dedication to eco-management led KMA to contact PRé about working together, nearly two decades ago. “Some Korean professors were familiar with SimaPro at that time,” Kim explained of the initial connection, and soon a longstanding partnership was born.
Kim and their clients have found over the years that “SimaPro is the most popular LCA software, a very easy system to learn and use.” SimaPro has helped countless clients throughout the country to quantify their sustainability efforts, and get a real sense of the environmental impacts their products have.
It makes sense that PRé and KMA have worked together so well for so long, the companies are founded on similar goals: focused on providing knowledge in a transparent manner. Add in a dedication to developing partnerships worldwide — both companies have global networks — and it will come as no surprise that Kim told us, “PRé is a great complement to our business.”
Ready for anything
Korea is a country dedicated to responsible growth. “Past governments were very interested in sustainability,” Kim said. Korean President Lee, who stepped down in 2013, had a stated goal of “green growth.” And though at the moment of this publication, it is too soon to tell how the new administration will prioritize environmental issues, Kim believes that, “sustainability implementation is expanding widely throughout Korea.”
And at KMA, Kim and his team are ready to help. “We encourage a creative environment, where it is easy for solutions to grow,” Kim told us of KMA’s plan for the future. He explained, “We focus on the fundamentals of management,” and have found that all answers come from this strong foundation. He said, “We are interested in the extension, where business meets sustainability.”
With plans to be around for the next 50 years or longer, KMA’s focus will be on “empowering implementation,” and bringing knowledge to all businesses throughout Korea, assisting with sustainability implementation and more.