Celltrion announced on the 26th that it will promote AI Transformation (AX) focused on three core business areas: new drug development, manufacturing, and office work. The company plans to reduce repetitive tasks and enhance the efficiency of research, production, and management operations to strengthen its competitiveness in the global pharmaceutical market.

The area where AI is currently being applied most actively is new drug development. Last year, Celltrion established a dedicated AI-based drug development organization and has been gradually applying AI to the development process, including discovery, verification, and optimization of new drug target candidate substances, by utilizing bioinformatics (BI) and AI technologies.

According to Celltrion, the use of AI is expected to shorten the new drug development period, which typically takes more than 10 years, and reduce development costs. The company is also conducting reskilling programs for in-house researchers to enhance their data analysis and AI utilization capabilities. It plans to accelerate the construction of its new drug pipeline through open innovation with external AI specialist companies.

In the manufacturing sector, the company is pushing to build a physical AI-based smart factory centered on newly established plants. At its new active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plants, Plants 4 and 5, to be built in Songdo, Celltrion plans to introduce autonomous mobile robots (AMR), automated logistics warehouses, intelligent robotic arms, collaborative robots, and manufacturing execution software, among others.

By the time the plants are completed, Celltrion intends to first automate standardized tasks and then apply AI to higher value-added work that requires decision-making. In the long term, depending on the maturity of the technology, the company is also considering the introduction of humanoid robots to promote the unmanned operation of non-standard, highly complex tasks.

The company is also expanding the use of AI in office operations. Celltrion is currently using AI for data analysis, dashboard development, and insight generation, and plans to apply AI chatbots to its Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) in the future. Based on simulations, the company expects that processing times for simple tasks such as document searches and document comparisons will decrease by approximately 80–90% compared with the past.

Celltrion’s AI transformation is being pursued through a two-track strategy that combines a bottom-up approach led by frontline operations with a top-down approach at the corporate level. While each department directly implements the automation tools it needs, the company as a whole is developing and deploying AI systems specialized in professional domains such as document drafting and yield optimization.

Through this, Celltrion stated that it plans to improve work convenience in the short term and, in the mid to long term, increase AI utilization across the entire business process, from research and development to production and office operations.

A Celltrion official said, “The AI technologies that we have been fully introducing since this year are being used to expand the scope of work automation and improve operational efficiency,” adding, “We will build an AI value chain throughout the entire business process, from new drug development to commercialization, and grow into a global comprehensive pharmaceutical company.”

According to Celltrion, after AI utilization training conducted this year, employee satisfaction in post-session surveys averaged more than 90%.

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