LS Group Chairman Christopher Koo looks at the exhibits on display at LS T-Fair 2018 at LS Tower on Sept. 17.

LS Group Chairman Christopher Koo and LSIS Chairman Koo Ja-kyun join forces in raising an agricultural drone. (Photos: LS Group)

LS Group Chairman Christopher Koo urged CEOs to accelerate groupwide spread of digital transformation. “LS’s survival hinges on the successful digital transformation, so CEOs are asked firsthand to spread it to organization,” he said.

Chmn. Koo made the remarks at the LS T-Fair 2018, a session of sharing R&D outcomes, which took place at LS Tower in Anyang, Gyeonggi-do, on Sept. 17.

Participants at the LS T-Fair 2018 that took place for a two-day run shared achievements and tasks of the group’s R&D activities. The LS T-Fair 2018, the 14th rendition of fair, is held every year since 2004 with the groupwide goal of strengthening technology competitiveness and spreading research environment.

Citing a study by University of Washington Foster School of Business, he said, 40 percent of 500 companies designated by the Fortune will disappear by 2025 after failing to comply with digitalization and whether the group will fall into the 40 percent will depend on the hands of R&D manpower in charge of exploring its future competition and creating new things.

Chairman Koo called CTOs and CEOs to spearhead changing of smart mindset and spread changes to employees and organization in a nimble fashion.

He stressed the importance of swift operation and differentiation of services rather than the establishment of strategies in an era of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

He urged the participants to find efficient, highly satisfying operation methods by combining IT and big data analyses with services, not just selling products, and reversing a process of realizing them in a nimble fashion. Koo appealed for changes in R&D processes.

Chairman Koo has emphasized “R&D Speed-up” and “Digital Transformation” as the group’s strategies to prepare for R&D and future since 2015. Each subsidiary of LS Group has been redoubling efforts to enhance by developing and operating digital design, 3D printing and virtual reality while implementing R&D tasks for digital transformation starting last year.

About 400 people, including Chairman Koo Ja-yeop of LS Cable & System, CEOs, CTOs and researchers of each subsidiary, participated in the fair.

An exhibition hall at the lobby of the LS Tower was filled with future digital technologies each subsidiary has pursued. LS Cable & System demonstrated an information management system using IoT designed to track the location of products , inventories and their theft.

LSIS experimented a cloud system for real-time monitoring of photovoltaic power and energy storage system (ESS) usage and conditions of products. Visitors were given a chance to experience such smarting farming solutions as self-driving tractors and agricultural drones, produced by LS Mtron.

The “2018 R&D Best Award” went to eight subsidiaries’ R&D outcomes, including LS Cable & System’s task on the development of European optical fiber cables and solutions.