Hyundai Steel President Ahn Dong-il.

Hyundai Steel President Ahn Dong-il announces management innovation through realization of “smart enterprise” at a smart academy education class at Dangjin Steel Mill in Chungcheongnam-do on Jan. 31.

Hyundai Steel is accelerating innovative management by establishing a more advanced “smart enterprise” with all sectors, including manufacturing.

Hyundai Steel said on Jan. 31 that smart factories are focused on upgrading the conventional manufacturing/production segments – where smart enterprise is a concept of smart management covering all sectors, ranging from manufacturing and production to infrastructure.

The move reflects management’s determination to step up innovative growth by making all sectors “smart.”

To this end, early this year, the steelmaker front-loaded a process innovation task force team responsible for implementing smart management in process, system and infrastructure sectors under the jurisdiction of the president.

Hyundai Steel intends to support growth by realizing smart enterprise through smart factory upgrades and smart management convergence.

The steelmaker has been striving for smart factory upgrade to improve the steelworks’ production process and technology power using AI and big data since 2017. Going forward a step, Hyundai Steel has established the new goal of smart enterprise to max out connectivity and convergence values.

Last August, Hyundai Steel’s Dangjin Steelworks inaugurated a department specializing in smart factories. The department is responsible for developing and implementing educational programs designed to nurturing specialized manpower related to AI.

The first class of the Smart Academy graduated from Dangjin Steelworks last year, and the second class is under way. The educational program will be expanded to cover Incheon and Pohang worksites this year.

Hyundai Steel President Ahn Dong-il participated in a related educational program.

At that time, he said organic networking and convergence among headquarters ranging from the production sector, a key of smart enterprise, to sales and procurement will facilitate rapid responses to customers’ needs and continuous growth will be secured through pursuit of customers’ values, and this can be achieved by concentrating on core responsibilities through the realization of smart enterprise.

In order to nurture smart manpower down the road, Hyundai Steel has set its own standards of grading ICT manpower into support, leader and master. The steelmaker intends to foster more than 10 percent of its engineers’ roster into leader status.

The process innovation task force team attaches top priority to standardizing guideline information to secure reliability of data. It is striving to improving the quality of companywide data while pursuing innovation through all processes ranging from sales to delivery.

To this end, the steelmaker plans to reestablish companywide operation guidelines and standards while pursuing integration of processes of each headquarters and sector-by-sector connectivity and settling a data analysis-based work process.

An overall view of Hyundai Steel’s Dangjin Steelworks. (Photos: Hyundai Steel)