"Tasks that took a month now completed in 8 hours" LGD embarks on productivity innovation with AI

[Financial News] LG Display is expanding AX (AI transformation) by applying AI across all business areas, aiming to strengthen fundamental competitiveness through 'productivity innovation'. They have already increased productivity by reducing panel design time from one month to 8 hours through the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), and plan to enhance work productivity by more than 30% within 3 years by advancing AI assistants. 
Lee Young-joo, head of Manufacturing AI at LG Display, stated at the 'AI Transformation (AX) Online Seminar' on the 5th, "In a highly competitive environment with challenges from Chinese companies, the most important means for LG Display to secure a continuous advantage is AI," adding, "We aim to become the world's number one beyond just a performance turnaround." 
LG Display has designated this year as the first year of AX innovation, applying self-developed AI across all business areas from development to production and office, and is expanding AX.
Notably, they are introducing 'Design AI', which proposes optimized design drawings from the product development stage. As the first step, they completed the development of the 'Edge Design AI Algorithm' for irregular (異形) display panels last June. Previously, it took about one month to generate a single drawing for complex panel edge designs, but after introducing the Edge Design AI Algorithm, the time required has been significantly reduced to 8 hours. 
Additionally, the 'AI Production System' independently developed by LG Display is specialized for OLED manufacturing processes. LG Display plans to fully apply the AI production system across all OLED processes, including mobile, TV, information technology (IT), and automotive, within the year. An LG Display representative stated, "The introduction of the AI production system has significantly reduced the time required for quality improvement from an average of 3 weeks to 2 days, and the expansion of good product production has created a cost-effectiveness of over 200 billion won annually." They plan to develop AI to the stage where it autonomously proposes productivity improvement measures and controls simple equipment improvements. They also plan to combine it with LG AI Research Institute's 'Exaone' for further advancement. 
To innovate the work productivity of office staff, including production workers, they are also applying the self-developed AI assistant 'Heidi (HI-D)'. The large language model (LLM) that serves as Heidi's brain utilizes Exaone. Currently, 'Heidi' provides services such as AI knowledge search, real-time translation of video conferences, meeting minutes creation, and AI email summarization and draft writing. In the second half of the year, they plan to expand to more advanced AI tasks, such as a document writing assistant function that drafts report PPTs. 
For example, if you enter a question like "Tell me the visitor registration procedure for the Paju business site" in the search box, the answer found in internal documents is displayed. In October, an image search function is also scheduled to be added. With the introduction of Heidi, average daily work productivity has improved by about 10% compared to before, and the company plans to continuously advance 'Heidi' to increase work productivity by more than 30% within 3 years. It is evaluated that the self-development has created a cost-saving effect of 10 billion won annually by eliminating the need for external AI assistant subscriptions for the same function. 
Jeong Cheol-dong, CEO of LG Display, emphasized, "By expanding AX company-wide, we are seeing results such as structural improvement, cost innovation, and profitability improvement," adding, "We will promote company-wide AX innovation to enhance the fundamental competitiveness of the business and present differentiated customer value unique to LG Display." soup@fnnews.com Lim Soo-bin reporter