The photovoltaic industry is one of the main research areas for regenerable energy usage and green growth policy of the Korean government. R&D programs of MEST(Ministry of Education, Science and Technology) and MKE(Ministry of Knowledge Economy) are concentrating on the development of fundamental and applicable technology which can be carried out by a so-called "Big company" consortium. So it is essential to discover and support R&D projects for small and medium enterprises(SMEs) in the photovoltaic industry. R&D projects should be funded effectively to enhance the competitiveness of the SMEs. It is a complicated process as to decide what R&D projects or key element technologies should be selected and how to support them. In this paper, the supply chain analysis is adopted as a critical tool for selecting the research areas and topics for the SMEs, which can be done by analyzing the number of the SMEs, the level of imports and the localization possibility for each supply chain element. We define the strategic products for the SMEs to deduct core technologies for each strategic product. R&D projects definition sheets are proposed for each core technology. All the decision making processes are authorized by a committee which consists of experts for academia, industries and the research field. The efficacy of the proposed framework is described throughout the photovoltaic industry.