LG Chem Piles On the Medals

LG Group affiliate's Ulsan plant clinches Total Productive Management Award at National Quality Management Convention

LG Chem Co. was awarded the Total Productive Management Award at the 34th National Quality Management Convention award ceremony held on Nov. 20 at COEX in southern Seoul.
The company also won the $7 billion Export Tower Award on the Trade Day.
Vice Chairman Kim Ban-seok said the company is very happy and proud to win the award in the area of facility management, adding that the company's Ulsan plant, which won the award, is over 30 years old.
He credited the award to all of the Ulsan plant's employees, as it is the result of all of them shedding sweat and making strenuous efforts to maintain the global edge for the company's competitive strength through differentiated TPM activities. Director Kim Jong-kook of the Ulsan plant won the Industrial Merit Tin Tower at the quality management convention.
This kind of experience of success will make a great contribution to the effort to make the Ulsan plant a great workplace where employees feel pride and have fun while boosting the trust in the plant's structure, the CEO said.
The Ulsan plant began its operation in 1974 as a complex factory for assembly, processing and installation works as the mother plant for LG Chem. At the time of the introduction of TPM, the plant's equipment was very old as were the employees running it, which could not help but raise production costs and hinder its ability to swiftly adapt new technologies, thus making it impossible for the company to turn a profit. In order to resolve these problems, the plant launched the TPM program in 1989 and within five years the plant turned itself around and was making money again through the participation of the entire workforce at the plant and the systematic implementation of the program.
In 1999 at the end of the "7 Steps, 1 Cycle" program, the plant pursued the professionalization of workers, installations and products through the plant's own TPM program designed to make the plant a pleasant place to work. Old facilities were upgraded in terms of function and look, which greatly boosted the productivity of the plant.
In 2006, the company developed "First-class TPM," a part of the TPM Phase III aimed at building a first-class jobsite free for a managerial environment, carrying out creatively independent and systematic activities continuously.
The Ulsan plant has been working on ways to grow together with customers through differentiated raw materials and solutions in order to help achieve the company's vision. The plant has been pushing quality reform activities based on speed management with emphases on 'early, fast and real time.'
The Ulsan plant plans to achieve its target of becoming a top global workplace by 2015 that can create value under any circumstances through the First-class TPM, its medium-range promotion strategy.
The plant has also been pursuing the Six Sigma program for its office work in a systematic and continuous manner. These TPM activities, including TPM Famous Place and Q-TPM, have been a core factor for the plant's development for the past 20 years.
In the meantime, LG Chemical announced that it will spun off its industrial materials sector to focus on B2B transactions. The board of directors meeting held on Dec. 2 approved the decision to split up the company's operations.
The shareholders' meeting on Jan. 23 is the forum for final approval of the split plan. On April 1 the company will officially be split into two companies, LG Chemical and LG Living Material.
The industrial materials sector accounted for 17 percent of the company's total annual turnover of 13.5 trillion won in 2007 with 2,600 employees, 26 percent of the company's 17,000 total employees. LG Chemical operated four major business lines including petrochemicals, electronic information materials, batteries and industrial materials.
The company spun off LG Healthcare and LG Life Science in 2001 and, in 2006, the company merged with LG Daesan Petrochemical and LG Petrochemical. LG Chemical has been in the process of focusing its business lines on the B2B sector, necessitating a spinoff of the consumer product division. nw

Vice Chairman Kim Ban-seok of LG Chem Co.