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Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been a fascination of popular culture. Often depicted in television and film, AI companions range from the empathetic and friendly Baymax of Big Hero Six to the conniving and humanoid Eva of Ex Machina. But, at least for now, how AI is integrated into our daily lives looks a little bit different.

Many people are aware of its use within the fields of security, healthcare, and marketing but AI technologies may soon become even more commonplace. Industries all over the world are making the move to embrace digital transformation—and AI stands to be a large part of it. Businesses must not only incorporate existing technologies into their service models, but also look forward. According to a 2021 Gartner survey on AI investment, more than 50% of technology providers report significant customer adoption of AI-enabled products and services. This demonstrates a clear need for businesses to embrace technological innovations like AI to keep on top of the growing demand for simple and efficient digital service solutions.

Advanced technologies like AI rely on hardware, especially for logic and memory functions. As such, the trend in AI-enabled digital transformation (DX) could represent the biggest opportunity for semiconductor companies in the last decade. In fact, growth in the semiconductor market in the area of AI is expected to be five times that of the growth in all other areas by 2025.

Matchmaking Automation and Intelligence

Traditionally, automatons were largely stationary manufacturing machines and often could be found performing highly repetitive or dangerous tasks in factory lines to increase production speed, reduce accident rates, and eliminate human error. Even today, a large portion of the work completed by autonomous machinery still takes place on a production line. Due to the routine and repetitive nature of many manufacturing tasks, this kind of automated machinery does not need to evaluate external variables or revise its own protocols and is limited to operating a series of simple tasks.

But, with advancements in AI and machine-learning, there is increased potential for automated machines to become more mobile, resourceful, and intelligent. These improvements are an important part of making digital automation relevant to industries outside of manufacturing.

Figure 1. Global investment is AI across various disciplines in 2019 and 2020.

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Enabling automated technologies to support the more complex, non-routine service needs of a variety of industries means countless more businesses can partake in modern day digital transformation in a more impactful way.

The Nuts and Bolts

Artificial intelligence describes a machine or software application’s ability to reason, learn, and act in a manner similar to human thought, so much so that parallels are often drawn between the human mind and AI systems. Just as synapses are essential to the transmission of nervous impulses within our brains, semiconductor memory stores and processes information as a part of AI systems for our mechanical counterparts.

Beyond its current applications in Big Data analytics and facial recognition software, AI is critical to enabling the next generation of automated solutions to problem solve, reason, and evaluate. This important evolution will expand the application of automated technologies, allowing for increased participation in intricate, multi-faceted problem-solving tasks.

In the first quarter of 2021, USD $1.7 billion was invested into artificial intelligence and machine learning chip makers, demonstrating clear means and a strong incentive for innovation in the AI semiconductor space. Semiconductors for use in AI systems must be designed specifically to handle complex workloads and parallel operations. These AI systems have to process incredible amounts of data quickly and accurately to understand and respond to environmental and stimulus changes.

Fortunately, industry leaders such as SK hynix are working diligently on memory and storage solutions that can support the demanding requirement of AI technologies. Advancements such as SK hynix’s 176-layer 4D NAND flash and DDR5 DRAM stand to play a large role in defining and supporting future AI and machine learning offerings.

Figure 2. SK hynix’s 176-layer 4D NAND Flash

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Figure 3. SK hynix’s DDR5 DRAM

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As AI continues to permeate business practices around the world, increased opportunities will arise in a number of areas including AI-optimized storage systems, infrastructure for data centers, programmable switches and high-speed interconnect. In tandem, the market is likely to begin seeking more end-to-end solutions from semiconductor manufacturers to satisfy business-wide digital transformation.

Supercharging Digital Transformation

Figure 4. The six digital platforms leading SK hynix’s digital transformation

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Digital transformation has been an important part of the corporate zeitgeist in recent years. This adoption of digital technology to improve business processes and deliver increased value is an important part of maintaining a business’ competitive edge in 2021 and beyond. Incorporating AI technologies offers an avenue for businesses to do more than simply improve work efficiency.

RPA, short for robotic process automation, sees businesses using automated machinery to complete routine tasks. Reminiscent of initial automatons, this is one way to undergo digital transformation. Powered with AI, the applications of RPA become much broader. If an unexpected event were to occur, a simple software robot would not be able to adjust and continue its work. To manage irregularities, it must be able to evaluate and make judgements, course correcting as it goes.

Many companies shifted to including more RPA in their service models in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic following an increase in consumer demand for socially distanced services. The business demand for automated integrations skyrocketed as a result with year-over-year orders for automated machines in life sciences, food and consumer goods, and automotive growing 69%, 56%, and 39% respectively.

Figure 5. Percentage of Executive Survey respondents increasing the pace
of their AI/Big Data investment.

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AI creates solutions that can accomplish more complex goals, meaning the level of human intervention required is decreased and the impact of digital transformation amplified. This means the complex problems often encountered in service-focused, customer-facing tasks can be resolved independently by AI solutions, answering the important social and cultural trends that surround the pandemic.

As a part of its AI-driven efforts, SK hynix, a major player in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, recently established Gauss Labs Inc.—an industrial AI solutions provider. Gauss Labs Inc. is the first AI company from SK Group to lead manufacturing innovation, marking a clear investment in internalizing AI practices by the forward-thinking ICT giant.

Figure 6. (From the left) Brendon Choe (Head of Computer Vision), Sunghee Yun (Head of R&D), Mike Young-Han Kim (CEO), Taeyoung Park (Chief of Staff), and Moosung Kim (Head of PMO) at Gauss Labs Inc.

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According to Gartner, one-third of technology providers with AI plans said they would invest USD $1 million or more into the technology over the next two years. Adopting automated solutions as a part of digital transformation will inevitably lead to an explosion in data volume and an increased demand for Big Data analysis and machine learning. As a result, corporate spending in Big Data and analytics is also on the rise with European spending in the area forecast to reach USD $50 billion this year. A parallel increase in the demand for data centers and the edge is likely—with some experts predicting a combined market value topping USD $18 billion by 2025. This growth is bound to spark additional innovation in the next generation of memory solutions.

Integrating AI technologies into digital transformation is an important part of the fourth wave of digital revolution in-step with the rise of robotics, machine learning, and demands for socially distanced solutions.

What automation began; AI supported by semiconductor memory will innovate—creating digital solutions primed to thrive in the face of the future.

The post Cracking the Code: Leveraging AI Technology in Digital Transformation first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

SK hynix’s DT-Based Innovation in the “Way of Working”

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In today’s era of big data, many companies are now able to discover the value of data that was not measured in the past or analyze an enormous amount of data that they would not have dared to analyze previously.
What is being emphasized to enhance operational efficiency by utilizing the insights obtained through collected and processed data, as well as to effectively seek new business opportunities, is DT. SK hynix is also making a lot of effort centering on the Digital Transformation (DT) organization to innovate the way of working based on the IT system. At the forefront of such changes, Song is leading the innovation of SK hynix.

“As all companies are now starting to focus on DT, companies that discover new insights through successful DT, and further develop, utilize them will have more opportunities to take the lead. We will do our best to perform DT so that SK hynix can seize such opportunities without falling behind in the competition.”

To successfully perform DT, simultaneous innovation in various aspects should be made. These aspects include efficient data collection and analysis, system and infrastructure establishment, and business process optimization. In particular, one of the core tasks of the DT organization is to systematically collect and efficiently process the enormous amount of big data accumulated through the semiconductor business to utilize it in the field.

“In the semiconductor manufacturing environment where technology is becoming more advanced than before, the ability to efficiently collect and analyze data is essential not only to enhance the semiconductor product competitiveness itself, but also to bring innovation in business overall. In this sense, we are strengthening the role of Data Science (DS) organization to discover valuable data and apply it to overall business to establish an environment that enables quick and accurate decision-making.

We also have built an infrastructure environment for Hadoop, a technology that processes large amounts of data by joining multiple computers as if they were one to collect data generated from various production facilities. Along with this, we have also prepared ‘Data Lake’, a database platform useful for retrieval, acquisition, algorithm development, and learning of collected data based on Hadoop. Also, ‘Master Data’ has been reorganized for efficient data collection and analysis, and various tasks are being performed for innovation in the field, mainly for automation and advancement of the manufacturing process.”

Song also emphasized the importance of “cloud migration” to secure the system and infrastructure necessary for smooth DT execution. With the advancement of technology including technology migration, the amount of data generated at semiconductor manufacturing sites is becoming tremendous. Under these circumstances, a cloud-based operational environment can increase cost and operational efficiency compared to an IT environment solely based on local server devices, as well as providing agility and expandability to the business. Accordingly, SK hynix has partially introduced and is utilizing a private cloud platform. Furthermore, SK hynix is responding to changes by promoting cooperation with many cloud service providers to accelerate the company-wide cloud transformation.

“For a semiconductor company where industrial security is important and processes are automated, introducing a cloud environment is very difficult. Nevertheless, to secure the reliability of the future IT infrastructure and the flexibility of the software to promptly respond to requests from the field, cloud transformation is necessary. We will continue to make efforts to ensure that numerous systems currently in operation can co-work organically and efficiently in the cloud environment, as well as stably introduce and settle the optimized cloud system.”

SK hynix started operating its M16 plant earlier this year and is preparing to build a semiconductor cluster in Yongin, South Korea for continuous growth and further strengthening the overall semiconductor ecosystem. The company-wide efforts are required for the efficient operation of these expanding production sites and the stabilization of the production system. As part of that, the DT organization has successfully stabilized the M16 at an early stage this year and is now concentrating on the advancement of the production automation system in the long term.

“In the case of M16 plant, the system architecture has been improved to a platform-based flexible service structure so that it can be expanded to the Yongin cluster in the future. We are expanding automation to ensure that each engineering task as well as production operation can be performed smoothly within this platform. In addition to increasing the system flexibility, we will accelerate the advancement and prepare for the future so that a more agile system can be applied to the Yongin cluster through the technology accumulation.”

Meanwhile, the DT organization is currently establishing a company-wide system called Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The ultimate goal of the PLM establishment is to secure the integrity of the company-wide business process by integrating internal systems that have been operated differently by each organization, and removing such silos which have been hindering communication between teams.

“Some systems were developed on demand when needed, so they are not easily linked with each other. As a result, important data often goes missing or it takes a long time to obtain the necessary data. To solve such problems, we are currently building the PLM system that connects the entire process encompassing product planning, development, manufacturing, and sales into one system in connection with each business unit. When the end-to-end visibility is secured through PLM, decision-making and execution are expected to become much more agile.”

A Pathfinder for Success

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With his previous career at SK Telecom until 2011, Song joined SK hynix in 2012. Since then, he has led future strategy and marketing at SK hynix and is currently leading the IT-based structural improvement of SK hynix based on his unique insight and broad understanding of the company.

“Back in the time, SK hynix was a company with great talents like now, playing an important role in the global economy. However, I thought the employees were underestimating themselves after going through difficult times. I wanted to create an environment where the employees can work with pride while increasing their self-esteem, and I think I have contributed to some extent to make SK hynix have such environment.”

Song also explained in detail how to be the best in the semiconductor industry, showing his earnest wish that SK hynix and its employees have desperate urge and solidify their will to be the best.

“Semiconductors are manufactured through a working “method” by investing “money” in “man”, “machine”, and “(raw) materials” – 5M in other words. Among these, we can assume competitors are under similar conditions in regard of equipment (machine) and raw materials. Ultimately, it is important to secure differentiated competitiveness in human resources (man), finance (money), and the way of working (method). To get ahead of competitors and take the lead, we need to optimize our unique way of working that organically connects man, machine, and materials to increase efficiency. This requires know-how in development and manufacturing, but it is also an area where the DT capabilities shine. We will successfully perform this role through close cooperation with the field organizations.”

To achieve this goal, Song presented three keywords of “Innovation”, “Internal Stability”, and “One DT” to members of the DT organization.

“To secure the highest level of DT competency, our solution should incorporate the most advanced technologies, and what is required for this is innovation. Innovation is also called the ‘product of deficiency’. I think it is important to find what we lack and work hard to improve it.

Enhancing internal stability is the task to be performed first to secure the resources needed for innovation. Innovation requires a lot of resources, but we cannot input limitless resources. As such, we need to strengthen the internal stability of our manpower, infrastructure, and so on, to ensure that the best results can be achieved with the optimal resource disposition.

‘One DT’ implies seamless collaboration between different organizations based on functional integrity. Since organizations of SK hynix are clearly divided by their function, when you are in charge of a certain job, you must complete it flawlessly and then deliver it to the next colleague. That is what I always emphasize to my team members as well.”

At the same time, Song has brought a big change to the DT organization this year to practically raise the capabilities of its members. Functional expertise was enhanced by separating the process integration (PI) work and development/operation work, while also deployed both the PI and data science (DS) organizations forward in the field. Along with this, Song is also working on bringing field members to the DT organization to solve practical problems in the field together, and sending them back to their original position so that they can further spread their DS know-how after returning to their own team.

“DS competency is not the only thing required for DT organization’s members in solving problems occurring in the semiconductor industry. Likewise, semiconductor experts in the field also need to have a certain level of DS competency for smooth collaboration, in addition to domain knowledge. To succeed in DT by utilizing high-quality data obtained from the semiconductor industry, versatile talents with both DS competency and domain knowledge are essential.

To secure such talents, we dispatch DS experts in the DT organization to the field to build expertise while bringing field engineers with domain knowledge to the DT organization to train them. We aim to train around 1,000 Citizen Data Scientists (CDSs: in-field data analysis experts) by 2023.”

A Pioneer of the “Happiness of Employees”

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The ultimate goal of DT is to increase work efficiency based on data and enable a quick and accurate decision-making process. At the same time, however, realizing the happiness of employees by making the way of working more rational and efficient is also one of the important goals. In this respect, Song is also considering the “happiness” of members as one of his main priorities.

In particular, as an organization that is leading the innovation in the way of working at SK hynix, the DT organization has a different way of working and organizational culture from other organizations. Based on the respect for this, Song gives sufficient trust to the members, while motivating them by emphasizing their “professionalism”.

“Considering the nature of the job at the DT organization, where high-quality results must be delivered by a deadline requested by fellow colleagues, results are more important than working hours. I believe that if I show trust to members and give them autonomy, they will respond accordingly and show great working attitudes. Accordingly, I strive to establish a flexible working environment, as well as an atmosphere that respects individual autonomy as much as possible.”

Environment, social, and governance (ESG) management is emerging as a new topic for companies these days. Song defined ESG as “pursuing a happy future for all through sustainable growth”, explaining that the DT organization is also developing the foundation to contribute to the ESG management.

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“The reason why sustainability has recently become a major talking point is that people seek sustainable growth while the resources on the earth are limited. That is, there is a fear that we would run out of resources someday in the future. Solving this is not that difficult. What we need to do is reducing the amount of resources required to do the same thing. For example, if something that had to be done with 10,000 servers can be done with 5,000 servers, it can save electricity required for operating extra 5,000 servers. Developing low-power semiconductors for the global environment is also based on the expectation of such effects.

In fact, minimizing resource consumption and streamlining the way of working is not much different from what all companies have been doing until today. What’s different is just the methods of “how” we work have become more advanced as more tools became available, such as IT technology and data. Therefore, the essence of DT is “Back to the Basic”. I believe that if we maximize the efficiency of work through DT, the ESG value will be met naturally in the end.”

The post A Journey to the World’s Best through IT Innovation first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

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As a supplementary article for the previous contribution, SK hynix newsroom is highlighting daily lives of Digital Platform Team, the innovators of SK hynix’s Digital Transformation who are dedicated to turn our workplace smarter and more digitalized.

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“Digital Transformation” is one of the most important topics in the 4th Industrial Revolution. In particular, businesses that pursue efficiency as a core value are making great efforts to build a smarter and more efficient work environment through digital innovation. SK hynix is also one of these pioneering companies. Due to the nature of the semiconductor industry, which is highly sensitive even to a change of 0.00001% in yield rate, “innovation in the way of work” is the important goal that should be conquered. To achieve this innovation, the company is continuously making company-wide efforts.

For smart and efficient work environment, changes are necessary not only in human resources and corporate culture, but also in tools for working. The Digital Platform Team, which will be introduced in detail later in this article, is leading the “Digital Transformation” of SK hynix by providing tools based on information technology (IT) to build a smooth working environment for its employees.

Creating a Comfortable Working Environment for Employees

The Digital Platform Team provides innovative IT work tools to create a workplace where employees can work more efficient. The team has two main goals. One is to develop various IT tools suitable for SK hynix’s work environment so that employees can work at their convenience. The second goal is to build and connect an integrated IT platform which will be the basis for Digital Transformation, in order to heighten the average level of SK hynix’s IT services and strengthen its competitiveness in services.

To achieve this, the team first goes through a planning stage to understand what kind of work tools employees currently need and come up with the solution. After that, the team constructs a framework for the overall project and proceeds with full-scale development. After a work tool is first developed and distributed to the field, the team seeks out feedback from the field so the tool can be adjusted and then distributed as completed version. By constantly communicating with the field, the team seeks to enhance the tools’ degree of completion before final launch.

Figure. 1 Dong Ho Seo, Project Leader (PL) at Digital Platform Team explains the main tasks and
work processes at Digital Platform Team.

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When it comes to performing the actual task, the team focuses on three aspects. The first is to help company members do their job better. In this aspect, the goal is to adjust the existing inefficient ways of working into efficient and desirable working environment. To achieve this, the Digital Platform Team is currently developing and operating some IT working tools. One of them is “Chatbot Service”, which supports various tasks in terms of general affairs, finance, taxation, funding, environment, safety, and health. Such IT tools also include “Tooltip Dictionary”, which provides functions like term searching and translation.

The second aspect is to help employees collaborate smoothly. In more detail, the goal is to eliminate the limitations of time and space by allowing tasks to be carried out in a mobile environment. To make this possible, the Digital Platform Team is developing and operating services including “CUBE”, a real-time cross-platform (both PC and mobile) communication tool, and “GooDocs”, which allows multiple users to edit and manage a single spreadsheet simultaneously.

The third aspect is to provide a system that can accumulate knowledge and information generated during work, allowing employees to search and browse whenever it’s necessary. The goal is to guarantee the result of each task is stored and shared anytime, anywhere. To realize this, a variety of services are being developed and operated by the Digital Platform Team. These services include a file-sharing service “HyDISK”, an SNS-based knowledge management service “Knowledge Blog”, the company’s own video platform “HyTV”, and the company’s own portal service “Integrated Search” that allows quick searches of internal documents and data.

Recently, the team has been committing itself to establishing “Smart Workplace Platform”. This project was designed not only to simply support the employees’ daily work processes, but also to take a step closer to the field and to innovate the entire equipment and material management system. The goal of this project is to build an integrated platform to easily store and preserve data in an in-house cloud by utilizing IT devices, so that the data can be managed more efficiently through the forms organized for each data type.

“Programming Skills Are Fundamentally Essential”

To hear more about the tasks of the Digital Platform Team, we met with Dong Ho Seo, Project Leader (PL) at Digital Platform Team, who is responsible for team management.

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Q. What are your current responsibilities in the team?

As PL at the Digital Platform Team, I oversee the overall planning, development, and operation of the company’s IT services, which are designed to improve work efficiency of our employees. My main tasks include presenting new ideas, converging the voices of field workers, and converting them into new IT service tools applicable.

Q. What qualities are required for the current job?

As an IT organization, programming skills are the most basic and fundamental qualities, yet communication skills are also important. This is because you need to accurately understand the employees’ individual needs and communicate with them frequently during the development process to provide the IT service they actually require. To precisely identify the pain point among the fragmented opinions, analytical skills and an ability to empathize with are also essential. In addition, an effective planning ability and creativity are helpful as well while designing functions that solve each paint point and realizing them as an integrated program.

Q. When do you feel most rewarded during your work?

While we sometimes create programs based on the opinions of our colleagues, we often design new programs with our own ideas. I feel thrilled when I see that our ideas are completed in a functioning program and utilized well in the field. It is most rewarding to see that my effort so far was not in vain and the result of my effort is applied and used meaningfully in the field.

Q. When do you find your work the most difficult? How do you overcome such difficulties?

It is difficult when the programs we made with good intentions are not accepted in the field. It’s frustrating when we only hear about complaints regarding flaws even though the programs have some advantages as well. When this happens, however, I try even harder to be more persistent to make further improvements, because I believe that we can present a good program that will satisfy both our team and our colleagues.

“The Most Rewarding Moment is to See Our Programs Are Widely Used in the Field”

Digital Platform Team’s young trio, Technical Leader (TL) Hee Jae Shin, Seul-ye Koo, and Minkyeung Song, also agreed to provide our newsroom with more vivid perspectives as members of the team.

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Q. What are your current responsibilities in the team?

Minkyeung Song: The basic focus of the three of us is similar. Currently, we are mainly focusing on developing and operating GooDocs, an in-house spreadsheet program motivated by Google Docs that allows multiple people to access and edit a single spreadsheet simultaneously.

Seul-ye Koo: In addition to GooDocs, we are also working on developing a dashboard-type graph system that is scheduled to open in late June this year.

Q. It seems that the programming skill is the most required quality at your team. What is the minimum level of programming skill necessary in order to carry out tasks smoothly?

Song: The programming language we use is different from what I learned as an undergrad, so I had to learn from scratch after joining this team. Of course, it will be helpful if you possess knowledge and experience in this area, but having a great sense of coding will be sufficient.

Koo: Programming languages are not always that important since it is often different from the programming languages taught at the undergrad level, but basic knowledge of algorithms and programming is required to some degree. In addition, design sense is also needed, because developing user interface is one of our major tasks as well.

Hee Jae Shin: Of course, competence in software development is important, but it can be learned after being assigned to the team. During the starting period, I think communication skills are more important, since the main task is to listen to the opinions of other people who actually will use the programs, and reflect them directly in the programs under development.

Q. When do you feel most rewarded during your work?

Song: One of my colleagues was using the GooDocs program, which we developed to enhance communication while managing tasks and collaborating. Interesting point was that the colleague was using the program to book a small meeting room which is not managed by the in-house system of our company. This was beyond our expectation since we didn’t think of such way of utilizing GooDocs when we originally designed it. I remember feeling so proud when I saw that. I felt proud when I saw that the program was being used more efficiently in the field than I previously anticipated during the development process.

Koo: It feels great to see a growing number of employees using the program we made. We can see the user statistics almost in real-time, and I feel very proud whenever I see a growing number of users.

Shin: I feel good when I get positive feedback. There is a great sense of accomplishment when I solve a problem after being stuck for a while programming new software.

Q. When do you find your work the most difficult? How do you overcome such difficulties?

Koo: The most difficult moment is when the deadline is very tight. Any programmer will agree with this. It is also emotionally difficult when I feel I lack competence. When this happens, I usually solve the problem with help from senior colleagues.

Song: When it comes to requests that are impossible or unreasonable to implement with a program, I feel frustrated. When it happens, I sometimes even wonder whether I really have to accept such requests at all. When I’m stressed about this, I try to be less impacted emotionally and try to do the job as reasonably as possible.

Shin: It’s most difficult when I’m stuck in the middle of the development process. When that happens, I try to hang onto it tenaciously as it is my job. If I stick to it like that, then the problem is eventually solved.

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Our enthusiasm for technology innovation lives in every aspect of our business. With young and passionate generation of members thriving for changing “ways of working”, we certainly believe we’ll be one step closer to our next innovation. This is how SK hynix, like we always say, do technology.

The post Digital Platform Team: Changing “Way of Working” with IT Innovation first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

Software has swallowed up the world in the 4th Industrial Revolution Era, and in order to keep up, companies including semiconductor manufacturers must stay competitive.

The competitiveness of a company is dependent on the strength of its members and its tools – from the competence of its members and the culture of its workplace, to the performance of its equipment and IT (information technology) systems (see Structure of Corporate Competitiveness chart below). Notably, IT systems have become particularly critical to companies’ success and growth, especially in the semiconductor industry recently.

Figure 1. Structure of Corporate Competitiveness

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To fuel the critical IT-based innovations into our corporate competitiveness, SK hynix has developed a Digital Transformation (DT) strategy to leverage digital technologies to meet the changing demands of the digital era.

Digital Transformation at SK hynix

At SK hynix, there are six digital platforms leading our Digital Transformation:

1. Communication & Collaboration Platform
2. Data Lake Platform
3. Cloud Native Platform
4. Mobile Platform
5. AI Service Platform
6. Analytics Platform

Figure 2. Digital Platforms Leading SK hynix’s Digital Transformation

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Leveraging these platforms, SK hynix uses design thinking alongside field engineers to “assemble” the digital products that can lead to a better user experience and work process innovation suitable for current working environments. The strategy of assembling products based on the platform breaks away from the ways of the past where people relied on already made IT tools, as the new strategy provides an environment where people can take it upon themselves to design their own tools and utilize them according to their specific needs. Simply think of “DIY (Do It Yourself)” as you make tools that work best for you.

Our Digital Transformation has come to life in the forms of three key examples:

1. Communication Innovation: Innovation of communication and cooperation among employees
2. Digital Workplace: Innovation towards data- and process-centered working environment
3. AI & Citizen Workforce: Transformation to the era of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and DIY

Figure 3. SK hynix Digital Transformation

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1. Communication Innovation

SK hynix’s existing communications mostly consisted of emails sent via PCs. SK hynix has since expanded to a collaborative environment that embraces both PCs and mobile devices by developing an integrated communication platform. This platform centralized a vast amount of knowledge and information communicated through it, and further recorded such communicative trails so that everyone who utilizes this platform can search their previous communicative logs and shared data. Additionally, the company succeeded to establish 3A (Anytime, Anywhere, Any device) environment which allows quick access to working environment from any device at any time, any place through newly developed Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). As a result, members are now able to easily adapt to the changing working environment.

One of our visible achievements is that the number of emails received/sent has been decreased by 63% from 2018 to 2019, which means internal communications have transformed into the environment which fosters better efficiency, faster speed, bi-directionality and real-time communication. The 63% reduction in emails has eliminated the unnecessary waste of 40 minutes for every employee each day.

2. Digital Workplace

Conway’s Law hypothesizes that all systems are designed in the same way as how the organizations communicate.

Figure 4. Conway’s Law¹

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In the past, the existing working environment was not intended for employees, who were essentially “consumers” of the company’s working environment. Eventually, users would have to combine the functions of multiple separated systems manually to handle their work, implying unnecessary loss of working efficiency. SK hynix re-designed this environment by dividing tasks based on their function, reorganizing it around the workflow of actual workers in charge, and connecting data and working processes in a user-centered way. By doing so, we are transforming into a user-centered digital workplace that allows employees to start and complete their work via one streamlined gateway.

Our digital workplace creates a foundation that connects workflows from End-to-End (E2E) starting from notifications that come from equipment, people, and etc. Due to the semiconductor industry’s nature, countless information and notifications are transmitted among engineers regarding process/yield rate/equipment, which is why by connecting all these events, data and processes, we can redesign our working environment into a human-centered one.

DT also triggered major changes of business devices within the FAB. The devices such as pagers, TRS phones, cameras, handbooks, and barcode scanners which are necessary in the FAB were all integrated into a single handy mobile app. Field workers now use smartphones/tablets inside FAB to confirm/diagnose equipment malfunctions and exchange information in real-time, or execute preventive maintenance (PM) for equipment with reference to video guides. In addition, QR codes let you request parts and materials to be delivered in a brief instant, and even manage warehouse inventory as shipments are being processed simultaneously. Finally, people now can record their working processes with smart devices in real time to ensure databases are up to date accurately for future work processes and cost-efficiency analysis.

Furthermore, by accumulating the previous technologies and work processes in the cloud platform, we can now seamlessly transplant them when establishing or operating a new FAB. Through this process, we continuously spread and reproduce work efficiency improvement and digital transformation in the FAB.

3. AI & Citizen Workforce

Big data-based Machine Learning (ML) / Deep Learning (DL) technology was also applied to SK hynix’s semiconductor manufacturing process and has already proven to be very effective. By focusing our AI capabilities on quality inspection, 75% of our quality inspectors’ work is now automated after introducing the DL-based visual inspection technique to the defective inspection, which was previously down to an operator’s visual observations. With ML / DL applied, we now can automatically group bad wafers (aggregating bad groups) and analyze which processes caused the defects. In previous, engineers had to analyze defects by themselves and figure out the cause of the defects manually. The automated system also executes pattern scoring, auto grouping, and even setting up the defect DB. This sped up the time for anomaly detection and cause analysis by three times compared to the previous ways.

From 2020, AI will be applied to more semiconductor manufacturing processes besides quality inspection. Hundreds of our experts and citizen data specialists have completed developing algorithms and they are currently preparing to apply them to the field.

Moreover, we have developed AI bots working 24 hours a day across various fields to support our members by automating their repetitive and regular tasks. Known as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), this system successfully automated repetitive tasks and manual work across all business areas including manufacturing, R&D and purchasing.

Figure 5. Demonstration of Digitalized Dashboard System with Virtual Data

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Our applications of DT in dashboard management, reporting, and analytics have gone beyond the scope of automation and entered the field of DIY. SK hynix applied various levels of analytics and business intelligence (BI) tools to enable users to make customized systems based on Data Lake and Analytic platforms. For instance, the employees can develop a customized system/template for their organizations so that other members can utilize it and improve working efficiencies. Unlike traditional BI tools, users can assemble various objects besides charts and grids in order to assemble highly visualized and functional layout for their self-designed system. The company continues to expand functions and train its employees so that they can utilize this tool-making mechanism with ease.

“Good people are born endlessly in a good system.”

Digital Transformation cannot be achieved with a single piece of technology or one-time effort. It requires the continuous evolution of a workplace and the engaged participation of all of its members – to change, evolve and adapt together.

As Changrock Song, Head of Digital Transformation (Chief Information Officer, CIO) at SK hynix says, “Good people are endlessly born in a good system.” The key of DT, after all, is people.

And it is our ultimate goal in SK hynix’s DT to create a fine system. One that is open and connected, one that inspires creative work, and one that empowers our company and each of us to grow together.

¹Melvin Conway, “Conway’s Law”, Mel Conway’s Home Page (1968)

The post SK hynix Fueling Innovation through Digital Transformation first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.