SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won has urged the conglomerate’s top executives to pursue operational improvement and bolster their core business expertise to take the lead in the artificial intelligence era.
Chey made the remarks as he wrapped up the annual CEO Seminar at the SK Management System Research Institute in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, the group said Sunday.
The tech-to-energy giant’s top leadership, including Chey, Senior Vice Chair Chey Jae-won, Supex Council Chair Chey Chang-won, and over 60 CEOs and executives from key affiliates, convened from Thursday to Sunday and reaffirmed the group’s commitment to strengthening core competitiveness.
The seminar comes as the group announced a major year-end reshuffle of its top brass on Oct. 30.
“Operational improvement may sound complicated, but it’s about getting the fundamentals right,” Chey told executives in his closing remarks, stressing the importance of checking that the company’s internal processes function well.
“If a company pushes for AI transition without a fundamental foundation, it is bound to fail,” he said, calling for the need to revisit the group's operational process over the past five to 10 years to avoid repeating mistakes. “Only by improving operations effectively can we build AI on top of it, and through this process, we will be able to resolve the challenges we’ve faced.”
Chey also underscored the importance of “domain knowledge,” referring to the accumulated expertise and experience in a company’s core business areas. “Implementing AI without domain knowledge will not solve the problems,” he said. “We can only gain the upper hand in the AI race when we have solid domain knowledge.”
He further called for SK to evolve beyond a supplier of high-performance memory chips and become a comprehensive solution provider to customers based on AI infrastructure.
At the seminar, executives also discussed ways to strengthen the group’s competitiveness in safety, health, environment, cybersecurity and compliance management.
sahn@heraldcorp.com
