Yuhan-Kimberly has established its Innovation Center, aiming to implement the company’s core values -- challenge and creativity.

The center at Jukjeon, Gyeonggi Province, which opened Oct. 27, is helping the company maximize efficiency in research and engineering.

The company said it will increase the number of research and engineering specialists to 72 from the current 50 by 2015.

The company had traditionally operated six departments -- “baby & child care,” “family care,” “senior care,” “feminine care,” “skincare” and “B2B.”

With the introduction of Yuhan-Kimberly’s innovation center, all of the company’s research and engineering resources has been integrated into a single unit.

“The results we get from each product development process will be applied to other product developments to see how it works,” a company official said.

“Such flexibility in research is expected to create a synergy effect for our productivity and product quality.”

The concept of open innovation has been a management trend among global business leaders after professor Henry Chesbrough introduced the term in his book “Open Innovation” published in 2006.

The goal is to create a firm and well-defined network of resources by freely exchanging ideas and resources among a company’s divisions, as well as with external organizations.

“The center represents our corporate value: challenge and creativity,” Yuhan-Kimberly CEO Choe Kyoo-bok said. “The competition in global hygiene products market is intensifying. Through the internal and external open innovation, the company will become the hub of hygiene product development.”

The company’s U.S. affiliate Kimberly and Clark already operates its Innovation Center Asia in Seoul and it plans to share its resources, ideas and know-how with Yuhan Kimberly’s new facility.

The officials also noted that Kimberly and Clark’s Global Innovation Center, which opened this year, will help the business expand in the global market.

Yuhan-Kimberly’s annual revenues are projected to come in at the highest level seen in recent years, according to Woori Investment and Securities’ earnings report released in July.

The company is likely to bring in record annual sales of 686 billion won ($609 million).

The report also forecasted that the company sales will hit 751 billion won ($666 million) in 2012-- a rise of 9.4 percent from this year-- without the influence of the new center’s opening.

By Monica Suk
(monicasuk@heraldcorp.com)