Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
LG Display eyes 30% improvement in productivity through AI
An infographic of LG Display's artificial intelligence transformation plan / Courtesy of LG Display
By Nam Hyun-woo
LG Display said Tuesday it is seeking to improve its productivity by 30 percent within the next three years by adopting artificial intelligence (AI) across its full working process.
During an online event, the display maker announced its midterm plan for AI transformation, saying it will apply its self-developed AI technologies across all business areas, from development and production to administrative operations.
LG Display said it introduced its AI-based manufacturing process last year, which led to more than 200 billion won ($144.4 million) in improved profitability through enhanced productivity. The company also developed its own AI assistant system, saving over 10 billion won compared to adopting external solutions.
Moving forward, the company said it aims to maximize productivity in areas such as timely development, yield and cost, with a goal of improving overall work efficiency by 30 percent within the next three years.
As part of its AI transformation effort, LG Display will expand the use of its AI design system.
In June, the company completed the development of an AI algorithm for edge area designing for flexible panels.
The AI system automatically designs patterns required for curved edges or narrow bezels on display panels. This has significantly reduced errors while cutting the time required to complete a single design blueprint from four weeks to just eight hours.
LG Display also applied AI to optimize the optical design for minimizing OLED color variations at different viewing angles, reducing a process that used to take more than five days down to just eight hours.
LG Display plans to prioritize applying AI to panel substrate design, and gradually expand its use to other manufacturing processes.
For those, the company said it trained its AI model using its domain knowledge to automatically analyze possible causes of defects in OLED production and suggest solutions.
As a result, the time required to improve quality has been reduced from an average of three weeks to just two days. This also improved the yield rate of panels, saving nearly 200 billion won annually.
A demonstration of LG Display's Hi-D artificial intelligence assistant / Courtesy of LG Display
For office workers, the company introduced its AI assistant Hi-D, which is now capable of knowledge search, real-time translation during video conferences and meeting minutes generation.
In the second half of this year, LG Display plans to expand Hi-D’s capabilities to include more advanced tasks, such as generating draft presentation slides for reports. Hi-D is based on LG AI Research’s EXAONE model.
LG Display said it will continue to strengthen its competitiveness in the global display market by leveraging its AI transformation capabilities.
“By expediting AI transformation across our work process, we are already seeing results in areas such as operational efficiency, cost saving and improved profitability,” LG Display CEO Jeong Cheol-dong said.
“We will continue our push for the transformation to enhance our core business competitiveness and deliver differentiated customer value that only LG Display can offer.”