As a certain type of a goods composing a finished goods or a material used in a special part, materials & components do not have an independent function but performs the complete role only when they are combined with other parts; and materials & components industry refers to the activity producing the materials& parts defined as above.
Material & components industry differs from the general concept of the industry - which applies the category by the finished goods or industrial classification- in that whose classification is based on the functional characteristics of the product, so its fields are quite comprehensive and the criteria is diverse accordingly.

1. Materials and components technology throughout the world has been making progress aimed at enhancing characteristics such as minimum/extreme/lightweight/high tech/high performance, and environment friendly/safety/convenience. Recent technology development tends to have a short life span whereas it requires enormous amount of expense, long-term research period for the development, and also bears a high risks. Since this kind of industry can have an economic impact and has a close relationship with other factors such as environment and safety issues as well, governments in advance countries have been supporting certain parts of the business to alleviate the companies¡¯ burden

2. Owing to the intensified technology development related with environment and safety, technologies of parts regarding automobiles, electronics, construction equipment, and railway vehicles are becoming to focus on the technologies of energy saving, alternative/clean energy resources, and contaminant reduction. For instance, as for automobiles, not only the symbolic technologies such as improving engines or developing zero-emission cars but also low gasoline mileage based on the diminished energy consumption and lightness, and improved technologies of each field of the part have been propelled. In addition, electronic materials business are now making investment in developing the technologies of electric energy saving, CO₂ & SF6 diminishing, electrical environment, alternative & clean energy. Materials business are generally focused on recycling industrial wastes and developing production processes with low pollution; whereas steel industry centralizes their constituent technology & equipment development activity on lower pollutant & efficient disposal, realization of the recycling technology, production enhancement by the unit process, quality upgrade, and manufacturing cost down.

3. Synthetic expansion among the materials and components technologies has been furthered. On account of the advanced electronic& IT technologies and computerized appliances and parts, and thanks to the mechatronics of general apparatus parts, computerization of the measuring & medical appliances/vehicle parts, expansion of the IT technology usage, power electronic technologies and digital technologies have been combined with electronic parts.

4. Specialization, mega-scale, and strategic alliances prevail. Mega trend centered on the components companies through the M&A has been rapidly increased recently to cope with the module ordering and tech development. That is, M&A among the automobile enterprises in 1998 has been doubled from 1997, and the expense increased by 4 times ($30.4 billion); companies like Delphi, Bosch, TRW and Lear are taking the initiatives. Material industries are trying to magnify their scales through M&A targeting globalization, profit increment, and market dominance(Steel industry: Usinor, Arbed, Aceralia M&A, NKK, KAWASAKI Steels, etc). Managerial environment can be described as ¡°survivor of the fittest¡± where only the real specialized enterprises can maintain one¡¯s existence.

5. Enlargement of procurement has been wide spread globally. The subcontract and international procurement for the major companies have been expanded, and each corporation depends on the external procurement when it comes to their electronic parts and materials.