お知らせ • Apr 30
LG Innotek to Build FC-BGA into 700 Million Business by 2030 with Its Dream Factory
LG unveiled the Dream Factory, a hub for the production of FC-BGAs (Flip Chip Ball Grid Arrays), the company's next-generation growth engine, to the media for the first time and announced it on the 30th April. In 2022, LG Innotek announced its plans to launch a business producing FC-BGAs, high-value semiconductor substrates. To build the Dream Factory, the company acquired LG Electronics' Gumi 4 Factory and began full-scale mass production in February 2024. The Dream Factory, spanning a total area of 26,000 square meters, is regarded as the industry's most advanced "smart" factory, integrating the latest IT technologies, including artificial intelligence, deep learning, robotics, and digital twin technologies. By applying automation, information, and intelligence technologies to the entire process, it has established a cutting-edge FC-BGA production infrastructure that eliminates the four major factors known to undermine production competitiveness: human error (Man), failure cost (F-cost), breakdown maintenance (BM) loss, and accidents. "Elimination of defects caused by human contact" through automation of all processes and logistics using robots. For semiconductor substrate products such as FC-BGAs, which require a highly demanding ultra-fine process, even the smallest foreign objects (eyelash, saliva, etc.) can cause quality issues. Therefore, it is crucial to minimize human contact with products during production. To this end, LG Innotek has introduced a completely automated logistics system at the Dream Factory, where coming across a person is a rare event. Apart from essential personnel, such as equipment maintenance and repair workers, all 10 steps of the FC-BGA production and logistics processes are unmanned. dozens of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) move materials around the production line autonomously. When a production order is placed, which is done automatically, based on the customer's delivery timeframe entered in the RTS (real-time schedule), the AMRs transport the raw materials to the process facility. Once the barcode on the raw material is detected, also done automatically, by the machine, the process recipe is automatically set on the equipment according to the product specifications through the recipe management system (RMS), after which the product processing begins. AI can identify defective products, and since every product has a barcode that tracks its process history, products that are deemed defective are automatically filtered out without the need for human intervention, reducing F-costs by more than 50%. Additionally, AI has been applied to the digital simulation system, which prevents product defects and equipment failures. Previously, the process of workers manually checking products for defects and identifying which machines were faulty and how to repair them in response to defects required a lot of time. This can now be significantly improved. By 2026, LG Innotek plans to introduce an intelligent Quality Management System (i-QMS) that detects and analyzes quality irregularities during production in real time and automatically corrects them. The company plans to automate the entire FC-BGA production process, especially by developing a platform that uses digital twin technology to share information on all processes, from product development to production, with customers in real time to enhance customer responsiveness. Optimized FC-BGA process equipment using digital twin technology, "halving the ramp-up period" Since even the smallest variables can lead to poor performance in FC-BGAs, equipment optimized for mass production and process recipes and production environments set to perfect values are fundamental to achieving high yields. The FC-BGA process equipment installed in the Dream Factory is set to optimal conditions through digital twin technology. In the past, identifying optimal conditions for the FC-BGA process required a lot of time and money, along with hundreds of tests. Before building the facility, LG Innotek managed to identify problems with the initial setup of the FC-BGA process facility in advance by conducting a "factory simulation" using 3D modelling in virtual space. This enabled the facility to be carefully set for optimal conditions, such as liquid, heat, and air flow, which were difficult to measure inside the actual facility. As a result, the ramp-up period (increase in production capacity by improving initial production capacity by improving initial production production capacity by improving initial production yields) was shortened by nearly half compared to the previous operation period. In addition, digital twin technology. In addition, digital twin technologies. In addition, digital twin®? was shortened by nearly half compared with the previous operation period (F-up period (increase in the previous operation period (increase in the ramp-up period (F-cost, digital twin technology, the previous operation period. Innotek has shortened by improving initial production yields) were shortened by improving initial production yields). In addition, the previous operation period (increase in addition, the previous operation period.