Samsung Plans 30,000 New Research Hires

The Samsung Group’s 47.5 trillion won research and development investment plan that will be implemented by 2010 will mostly go to next-generation growth industries such as electronics, engineering, and chemicals.

The businesses designated as such growth engines are: next-generation displays, mobile telecommunications, digital TVs, next-generation printers, system Large Scale Integrated Circuit (LSI) and air control systems, among others. In effect, Samsung will intensively develop businesses that are already global leaders, in order to firmly entrench itself at the top by the year 2010.

Investment focused on next-generation growth-

To acquire technologies that will enable it to lead the market, Samsung has also decided to step up its investment in future growth industries including energy, high value-added ships, precision optical devices and electronic materials.

The R&D investments Samsung will make for the next five years are double the 24 trillion won it invested for the same period from 2001 to 2005. The specific investment amounts for each industry were not revealed.

Samsung Group estimates that the number of its “World’s Best” products will grow from the current 21 to 50 items by 2010 when all its investments are completed.

“Only the companies that create and lead the market with innovative technologies will survive in the 21st century,” said Lee Yun-woo, the Samsung vice-chairman in charge of its technology division as he announced the vision of technology-prepared management. He emphasized that they “must focus key efforts on research and development in order to achieve Samsung’s goal of establishing itself as a global top company.”

Large-scale R&D recruitment planned-

If Samsung fully carries out its plan of making large-scale recruitment of R&D personnel for the next five years, it will likely lift many science and engineering graduates out of their job-seeking difficulties.

By hiring 6,000 new R&D employees annually for five years to a total of 30,000, Samsung will completely transform its personnel structure by 2010 into one adopted by most advanced countries.

The Group has employed 8,000 fresh recruits this year, including 3,000 in the R&D division. This means it will make annual R&D recruitments of double the size of this year’s figure. New recruits for next year, including those for R&D are projected to number more than 10,000.

“We need such a large number of personnel dedicated to R&D as we are targeting next-generation growth industries,” the Samsung Group stated, adding, “The figure is not so large since we take into consideration many different alternatives in our research and development.”

Samsung also declared a plan to put 1.2 trillion won into establishing a management culture of good partnership with its smaller suppliers by the year 2010.

More specifically, it will invest 1.05 trillion won into creating component facilities within the nation and upgrading factories, 108 billion won into field training and management consulting services for suppliers, and 32 billion won into professional job training.

Samsung has also decided to make an investment of four trillion won in industry-academia cooperation for R&D in order to cultivate basic sciences.

Young-Hae Choi yhchoi65@donga.com