Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150.KS) has held its first in-house competition to deepen employees' understanding of artificial intelligence and improve efficiency in office work and manufacturing. The company said it will use the event to push ahead with a "one person, one agent" plan under which every employee builds and uses an AI agent tailored to their own job.
The company said on the 13th that it opened its first in-house hackathon at its Suwon plant in Gyeonggi Province. The event, running for four days from the 13th through the 16th, drew 200 employees who will plan ideas and develop products to solve assigned problems using SEMCo-Work, the company's in-house generative AI platform.
The employees were divided into 100 teams of two and began work on a task described as developing agentic AI that reduces repetitive work and can be applied directly to real tasks. Participants plan to build and submit products that can be used on the job, reflecting the nature of a manufacturer whose work spans product development, production and quality control, and customer response.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics plans to select gold, silver, bronze and honorable mention winners among the competing teams and award a combined 33 million won ($23,000) in prize money. Company executives and executives in charge of AX, or AI transformation, at Samsung affiliates have been appointed as judges. The awards ceremony will be held at the company's founding anniversary event on the 2nd of next month. The AI agents developed at the event will be made available to all employees.
The company said it will use the hackathon to spread an AX culture in which employees use SEMCo-Work to build AI agents themselves to solve problems in their work. SEMCo-Work is an AI platform the company developed on its own servers and security systems.
"The AI era is still only 'Jan. 1,' and we need to respond to the growth and innovation led by AI from a long-term perspective," said Chang Duck-hyun, president of Samsung Electro-Mechanics. "The experience of building an agent suited to your own work through this hackathon will be the start of 'one person, one AI agent.'"
Chang Woo-seok, executive vice president and chief AI officer, said the process matters in which employees who know the work best build the agents they need with AI and improve them together with colleagues. "We will support every employee in using AI in their work and make sure strong projects spread into real improvements on the job," the CAIO said.