Philips

PIA in Bruges is a Global Development Centre (GDC) and a Product Introduction Centre (PIC) for the Upmarket Displays (UD) category within Philips Consumer Lyfestyle (CL). Over the last years, the centre has grown to be an international competence centre for upmarket television and the most important centre for development of televisions in the Philips group.

The category UD’s objective is to develop and deliver the best television viewing experience encompassing image and sound quality, design and styling, ease of use, technological innovation. It has won multiple awards and recognitions for its products, including as latest example the EISA Best European full-HD LCD TV for 2007-2008.

The GDC in Bruges is a multidisciplinary centre for development, including electronics, mechanics, software, system integration. These disciplines are structured in interdisciplinary function teams (or pillars) that focus on specific functional domains (e.g. video, audio, styling, UI, etc). In addition, competence teams complement the organization in domains like CAD, testing and validation, configuration management, process improvements.

The GDC has a close cooperation with Philips Research and the Innovation Lab in Eindhoven. The GDC is also closely coupled to the PIC, which is responsible for development and tuning of production processes, which are then transferred to mass production centres globally.