LG Display LCD Panel Factory - Paju, South Korea

The first thing to understand about such factories is they are huge. This particular facility currently has two panel factories: One is a “Gen 7″ factory capable of creating “motherglass” that is 1,950 by 2,250 mm, and the other is a “Gen 8″ factory, which can create glass that is 2,200 by 2,500 mm. The Gen 7 factory turns can turn its glass into eight 42-inch LCD TV panels or six 47-inch LCD TV panels; the Gen 8 factory can do 8 47-inch LCD TV panels, 6 55-inch LCD TV panels, or 18 32-inch LCD panels from each piece of mother-glass.

LG Display Gen 8 LCD Factory

Overview of LCD Panel and Mother-Glass

The current LCD process works by sandwiching liquid crystals between two pieces of large, specially treated sheets of mother glass. Huge machines take the first of these layers and build a “thin film transistor” layer on top of it. This transistor layer creates what is known as “active matrix LCD,” the kind used in notebooks, monitors, and TVs.

The other glass layer typically contains a color filter and a polarizing film. By detecting changes in voltage, the transistors control the amount of light being let through at any place in the display, and the liquid crystals let the light through for each of the sub-pixels: the red, green, and blue as defined on the color filter. This very complex process creates what is known as the LCD panel itself.

LG Display uses a technology called “In-Plane Switching” (or IPS, as per Panasonic LCD display technology – IPS), which aligns the liquid crystal cells in a horizontal direction, as opposed to “Vertical Alignment,” which some other makers use. LG believes this gives their displays a better viewing angle and says it consumes less power. But the panel is only part of a modern display. Another facility at the site takes the panels and turns them into LCD modules, which means adding various other layers, such as controllers to direct the TFT display, diffusers and prisms, light guides, and perhaps most obviously, the backlighting unit. The vast majority of TVs today use fluorescent backlighting, though LED backlighting is now common in notebook displays, and LED or edge-lighting is now entering the high-end TV market.

Automated LCD Panel Inspection Test

Once the module is created, it then typically gets sent to another site (and another company), which adds the tuner and other electronics and the case it needs to become a TV. At the Paju facility, the LCD panel factories are as tall as a 20-story building, though they only actually have 4 floors of manufacturing. That’s because the machines that move the glass and etch the lines that make the transistors are enormous.

The module building is smaller, about 6 stories tall–though actually a lot more people work in that building (as the panel process is so automated.) LG Display has about 7,800 workers at the plant; and the whole enterprise (including a nearly facility that makes chemicals and the glass) employs about 15,000 people. The facility even has a dormitory for 5,700 of the workers.

The facility is located in Paju, which is northwest of Seoul, within site of the DMZ. And the facility has space for three more panel factories, though the company has not yet announced any specific plans.

The facility has a showroom for showing off the company’s technology–from viewing angles of current TVs to the company’s 240-Hz panels (done by scanning the backlight) to technology for 3D TVs.

LG Display LCD TV Show Room with 240Hz TV

IPS Alpha Technology

Japan’s IPS Alpha Technology Ltd and Panasonic Group will invest 65 million ringgit (18.26 million U.S. dollars) in a Malaysia facility to produce liquid crystal display (LCD) television, which basically is Panasonic Viera Series LCD TV.

A new production line will be setup within Panasonic’s TV production plant in Shah Alam to produce LCD TV module (example like LCD TV mainboard). The new subsidiary of IPS Alpha Technology Himeji, IPS Alpha Technology Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. Will start operation by February 2009 with initial output of 50,000 units per month, and future will raise output to 3 million units per year.

IPS Alpha Technology Ltd, previously known as Hitachi Liquid Crystal TV Display Co. Ltd, established in Jan 2005. Head office located in Mobara City, Chiba Prefecture, situated about 10 KM from the southern tip to the west of Kujukuri Beach, centrally located in the Boso Peninsula. It currently is joint venture by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd (or Panasonic Group), Toshiba Corporation and Hitachi Display Ltd. The scope of business involvement includes manufacture, design and sales of TFT LCD panels for televisions. This mean to me that LCD TV from Panasonic, Toshiba and Hitachi may roll under products of IPS Alpha Technology Ltd. (Correction: IPS Alpha Technology Ltd investment ratio is Hitachi Displays 50%, Panasonic Corporation 45%, DBJ New Industry Creation Investment Business Union and others 5%. We not sure Toshiba still source their Regza LCD panes from IPS Alpha)

IPS Alpha Technology Himeji Plant

The LCD panels will remain manufacture in Himeji plant, where the subsidiary company is IPS Alpha Technology Himeji Ltd. For IPS Alpha Technology Malaysia Sdn. Bhd, it will focus on LCD modules for IPS LCD Panels.

IPS Alpha Technology Demo

Some of you may curious to know what is IPS? It stand for In Plane Switching, for more detail, please be patient and I will blog on this.