Pohang Steelworks Selected as Korea's First Lighthouse Factory... Hosts 'Smart Technology Competition'

Sharing Best Practices of On-Site Applications in Big Data, AI, IoT, and Automation

POSCO Pohang Steelworks held the Smart Technology Competition at the POSCO headquarters conference hall to share outstanding on-site improvement cases utilizing smart technologies.

POSCO Pohang Steelworks is taking a group photo with employees who won awards at the Smart Technology Competition, which shares excellent cases of field improvements using smart technology.

Since 2017, POSCO has held the Smart Technology Competition annually, marking its 8th edition this year.

Through this competition, POSCO shares achievements in smart technologies applied to steelmaking processes and spreads best practices to other operations, thereby enhancing the smart technology capabilities of on-site engineers.

Thanks to these efforts to lead in smart technologies, POSCO became the first Korean company to be selected as a "Lighthouse Factory" by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in July 2019.

The Lighthouse Factory is a designation by the World Economic Forum (WEF, also known as the Davos Forum) for factories worldwide that are innovatively leading the future of global manufacturing by actively adopting core technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data?just as a lighthouse guides the way in the dark night.

In this year's competition, after preliminary rounds in each category, nine smart technologies?applied in the field and yielding outstanding results in areas such as Big Data/AI, IoT, and automation?advanced to the finals for fierce competition.

In particular, technologies that replace traditional human monitoring and inspection tasks with AI video recognition through smart CCTV drew significant attention.

After intense competition, the Grand Prize was awarded to Lee Hojin, Manager of the Quality Technology Department at Pohang Steelworks, for his work on "Improvement of Secondary Steelmaking Judgment System Using AI Models," which significantly improved the slab yield rate by introducing a judgment model based on a physical artificial neural network model.

The Excellence Awards went to Lim Hanjun, Assistant Manager, for "Development of Auto Leveling Technology for Hot Rolling Process Using Video AI Technology," which reduced rolling production failures, and to Jang Inho, Senior Operator, for establishing a "Real-time Anomaly Prediction System Through Self-developed Low-frequency Filtering Algorithm." Kim Nahyun, Kim Geonwoo, Lee Seunghee, Lee Doohwan, Han Sangcheol, and Han Kyunghwan received Encouragement Awards.

Chun Siyeol, Head of Pohang Steelworks, stated, "Let us work, communicate, and make decisions based on data, and together create a smart steelworks that overcomes the crisis in the steel industry through challenging and sophisticated technology development."

POSCO plans to continue promoting the Smart Technology Competition, relentlessly accelerating technology development to establish a smart-based working culture that creates a better working environment and enhances productivity.