Improving Steel Band with Gaps to Ensure Safety When Unpacking Coils
Attracting Attention by Promoting Mutual Growth through Joint Development with Competitive Local SMEs
[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Heo Seon-sik]
POSCO Gwangyang Steelworks (Director Lee Jin-su) has significantly reduced safety risks that may occur during coil packaging dismantling work by improving the shape of steel bands.
Steel bands serve as a type of strap used to wrap and fasten coils for packaging.
Previously, steel bands were tightly fastened to prevent loosening, but this caused the gap between the coil and the band to narrow, making cutting difficult.
As a result, forcibly removing the steel bands posed potential risks of abrasions caused by tipping or elasticity, and also affected safety and quality aspects such as delays in dismantling time and rust formation during rainy weather.
The Quality Technology Department’s Automotive Steel Sheet Quality Management Section at Gwangyang Steelworks began collaborating with the Plating Department and POSCO M-TECH to solve these issues. Based on POSCO’s performance-sharing project*, they partnered with Hanatech, located in Okgok-myeon, Gwangyang City, to develop a steel band forming device.
After more than a year of multiple experiments and improvements, Gwangyang Steelworks successfully co-developed a steel band forming device last month that facilitates easy packaging dismantling. Following pilot operations, it was applied to the packaging process of plated products, enabling co-growth with suppliers.
The newly developed device by Gwangyang Steelworks and Hanatech forms the steel band itself into a shape with a slight gap, allowing coils to be simply packaged as before without additional measures or accessories. This also has the advantage of preemptively preventing safety accident risks for customer workers.
In particular, overseas competitors insert pads during packaging to create gaps between the steel band and coil for easier dismantling. However, if the pad becomes loose due to unstable fixation, the coil cannot be properly wrapped. Therefore, the steel band shape improvement by Gwangyang Steelworks shines even brighter.
After final performance verification in July this year, a total of 38,000 coils?35,000 domestic and 3,000 overseas?were shipped to customers using the improved steel band packaging. The number of customers requesting expansion of the new steel band usage is steadily increasing.
Kim Byung-chan, Manager of the Quality Technology Department at Gwangyang Steelworks, who was in charge of the development, said, “POSCO is the only company that has achieved such improvements both domestically and internationally. We thank the Plating Department, POSCO M-TECH, and Hanatech for collaborating with the Quality Technology Department.”
He added, “We are pleased to have achieved win-win cooperation with customers by preventing safety accidents and saving time during coil packaging dismantling based on the steel band forming device.”
Meanwhile, under the awareness that customer safety is our safety, Gwangyang Steelworks plans to continuously secure worker safety and flexibly respond to increasingly stringent safety management demands by expanding the application of the steel band forming device not only at Pohang Steelworks but also to customers and suppliers.
Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Heo Seon-sik hss79@asiae.co.kr
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