LG Display: "Product Design Time Reduced from One Month to 8 Hours with AI"

LG Display Drives Productivity Revolution with AX Adoption
Expanding AI Implementation from Design to All OLED Processes
Jeong Cheoldong: "Company-wide Innovation to Strengthen Competitiveness"

LG Display has significantly reduced its product design time from about one month to just eight hours by introducing artificial intelligence (AI). By expanding the application of AI systems company-wide, from design to its core organic light-emitting diode (OLED) production processes, LG Display has not only shortened production times but also improved annual profitability by approximately 200 billion KRW. Jeong Cheoldong, CEO and President of LG Display, emphasized, "We will enhance the fundamental competitiveness of our business through AX innovation."

On August 5, LG Display introduced these achievements, calling this year the "first year of AX innovation," at the 'AX Online Seminar,' and announced its future implementation plans. The company plans to apply its self-developed AI across all business areas, including development, production, and office operations, to secure differentiated competitive advantages in timely development, yield, and cost. By building its own AI assistant system, LG Display has also saved over 10 billion KRW compared to adopting external solutions.

Edge Design That Took a Month, Now Just 8 Hours with AI

Lee Heedong, Head of the Design AI Team at LG Display, stated, "We introduce 'Design AI' from the product development stage," and presented the 'Edge Design AI Algorithm' for irregular-shaped display panels, which was completed in June this year. Unlike regular displays, irregular-shaped displays have curved or ultra-thin bezel edges. Therefore, 'compensation patterns' had to be individually designed to fit each edge, leading to frequent errors and defects. If a defect occurred, the entire design had to be redone from scratch, resulting in an average of one month to complete a single drawing.

With the algorithm developed by LG Display, AI automatically designs the patterns needed for curved or narrow bezel edges of the panel. This not only significantly reduces errors but also cuts the required time down to eight hours. Lee explained, "The time saved can now be devoted to evaluating suitability and improving quality."

AI has also been applied to optical design, a technology used to optimize OLED color variation according to viewing angles. Previously, multiple simulations were needed to achieve optimal optical design, taking more than five days. With AI, the entire process of design, verification, and proposal is performed rapidly. As a result, the design was completed in just eight hours.

Intelligent AI Production System... Applied to All OLED Processes

LG Display Paju Plant Panorama. LG Display

The efficiency gained in the design phase is directly leading to improvements in the production process. By linking AI-based design data to the manufacturing site, defect rates are reduced and yield is increased. In manufacturing, the company is expanding its 'AI production system,' which reflects the complex process characteristics of OLEDs. To overcome the high complexity of OLED manufacturing, LG Display has trained AI systems with 'domain knowledge' of manufacturing processes. As a result, the AI system automatically analyzes countless possible 'abnormal causes' in the manufacturing process and suggests solutions. This is a revolutionary improvement in analysis speed and accuracy.

With the introduction of this AI production system, the time required for quality improvement has been dramatically reduced from an average of three weeks to just two days. The increased production of non-defective products has generated annual cost benefits of over 200 billion KRW. Additionally, the time previously spent on manual data collection and analysis can now be devoted to high-value-added tasks such as deriving solutions and implementing improvements.

Work is also underway to further advance AI technology. Lee Youngjoo, Head of the Manufacturing AI Division at LG Display, explained, "In the future, we plan to develop AI that can autonomously propose productivity improvement measures and control simple equipment enhancements." He added, "We also plan to further enhance performance by integrating 'EXAONE' from LG AI Research Institute."

HI-D, From Search to Reports, Instantly

LG Display's self-developed artificial intelligence (AI) assistant 'HI-D' supporting real-time translation in video conferences. LG Display

The transition to AI is progressing rapidly in office work as well. Through its self-developed AI assistant 'HI-D,' LG Display is improving work efficiency. HI-D supports AI-powered search, real-time translation during video conferences, meeting minutes creation, email summarization, and draft writing. The company also plans to expand its features to include drafting presentation slides for reports. In particular, the 'HI-D Search' function has learned about 2 million internal documents to provide optimal answers to work-related queries.

For example, when users input questions such as "Tell me the visitor registration procedure for the Paju plant (system manual)" or "Tell me the standard for factory gas valve replacement (standard)" through HI-D Search, AI retrieves and displays answers from internal documents.

According to the company, average daily work productivity has improved by about 10% since the introduction of HI-D. Through continuous advancement, LG Display aims to increase work productivity by more than 30% within three years. By developing its own AI assistant, the company has also saved over 10 billion KRW annually compared to subscribing to external services with similar functions.

Based on this AX strategy, LG Display plans to enhance efficiency across product development, production, and overall business operations, improve the cost structure of its OLED-based business, and increase profitability. Jeong Cheoldong, CEO of LG Display, emphasized, "We will drive company-wide AX innovation to enhance the fundamental competitiveness of our business."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.