Posco, South Korea’s top steelmaker that built its reputation as a powerhouse in the traditional carbon-emitting manufacturing industry over last half a century, is gearing up to usher into the new industrial age of automation, smart manufacturing, and clean energy.

Since its Smart Solution initiative launched in 2016, the company has been active in integrating ICT into its core businesses of steel, construction, and energy.

Posco Chairman Kwon Oh-joon recently visited Siemens in Germany and General Electric in the United States, the two manufacturing front-runners in the transition towards the fourth industrial revolution, to get inspiration to apply smart and computing solutions in steelmaking. Kwon agreed to cooperate with GE to find the edge opportunities for mutual growth, for example, by mixing GE’s smart factory platform with Posco’s self-developed technologies during his meeting with GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt who visited South Korea early last week.

Posco’s steel plate factory at Gwangyang Works is already transforming its integrated production process by building a data integration infrastructure that encompasses all of its operations and facilities. The factory introduced a data pre-analysis system that can preemptively detect abnormalities. Laser sensors with AI functionality are installed on the second hot rolling mill at Pohang Works.

Early this year, Posco successfully developed an artificial intelligence-based solution to micro-control the level of galvanization automatically on its Continuous Galvanizing Line. With the solution developed in collaboration with industry and academia, the company is now able to dramatically reduce the variance of plating yields, which is the key to the production of steel plate for cars.

Posco also plans to bring smart solutions to the entire value chain in the process management from order processing to production control to shipment.

By Moon Ji-woong

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