Brick-and-mortar firms adopt AI

POSCO engineers monitor an artificial intelligence-based system’s calculation of optimal coating weight for automotive steel sheets in a control room at the company’s steel mill in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province, in this January. / Courtesy of POSCO

Steelmakers, builders work on futuristic techs

By Yoon Sung-won

Brick-and-mortar businesses are boosting efficiency in manufacturing and construction work by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Korea’s leading heavy industry companies such as POSCO and Hyundai Steel are tapping into the technologies to increase yield rate, reduce defects and to provide internet of things (IoT) services, according to industry sources, Sunday.

In March, POSCO introduced AI technologies to its steelmaking process for the first time in Korea, aimed at improving its workplaces as smart steel mills.

The company said it has worked with SungKyunKwan University’s department of systems management engineering to develop an AI-powered automatic coating weight control technology, and applied it to its workplaces this January.

“Taking one step forward from establishing a smart factory and boosting our business competitiveness, we are seeking new business opportunities by connecting diverse industries to information and communication technologies,” POSCO Chairman Kwon Oh-joon said.

POSCO said the new technology uses AI-based algorithms to maintain an optimal and constant coating weight to automotive steel sheets.

In the steelmaking industry, maintaining a constant coating weight is considered difficult work because the manufacturers have to chain factory settings to meet the different demands of carmakers.

In particular, the existing way of controlling coating weight, based on manual handling by human workers, usually accompanied errors and overconsumption of zinc, which is the key material for coating.

As one of its key high value-added products, POSCO’s coated automotive steel sheet is considered to require complicated manufacturing technologies that only about 20 steelmakers in the world can produce. The company sold about 9 million tons of automotive steel sheets last year, 10 percent of the entire market demand worldwide.

POSCO said it plans to expand application of AI technologies to other types of steel products to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Hyundai’s AI application

Last month, Hyundai Steel introduced the deep learning algorithm that was used by Google subsidiary DeepMind’s AI system AlphaGo, to develop new manufacturing technology for automotive steel sheets. The new sheets developed using this technology has about a 40 percent higher solidity, the company said.

“The new steel sheet has maximum solidity, and price competitiveness,” an official at Hyundai Steel’s R&D center said.

Automotive steel sheets are made by fusing seven metallic materials including iron, zinc and manganese. Though it is essential to figure out the optimal formula with the best performance and profitability, the calculation is considered to be too complex to do without high-powered computers.

Hyundai Steel said its R&D center worked with advanced materials engineering experts for the last three years to develop the algorithm based on Google DeepMind’s deep learning.

“It is noteworthy that we have made the achievement by using the AI deep learning technology in actual manufacturing,” said Sohn Kee-sun, a nanotechnology and advanced materials engineering professor at Sejong University.

Sohn participated in the Hyundai research project.

“Upon the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the combination of AI technologies and manufacturing is highly likely to dramatically change how things work in the industry,” he said.

The steelmaker plans to roll out the next-generation automotive steel sheets in the latter half of this year.

Caption No. Hyundai Engineering and Construction (E&C) CEO Jung Soo-hyun, left, shakes hands with former Naver CEO Kim Sang-hun after agreeing to co-develop a voice-recognizing digital assistant system for apartments at Hyundai’s head office in Seoul in this Nov. 22, 2016 photo. The two work on the project. Courtesy of Hyundai E&C

Hyundai E&C

In the construction sector, Hyundai Engineering and Construction (E&C) is working with Naver to introduce a voice-recognizing digital assistant system for its Hillstate brand apartments. The two companies signed an agreement for cooperation last November.

With the system, residents of the apartment can give verbal orders to it to control built-in devices and home appliances. They can also receive weather information and the latest news through the system.

“We will continue to take a leading role in creating houses of the future by applying both AI and ambient intelligence technologies not just to apartments but also to all the houses that we build,” Hyundai E&C CEO Jung Soo-hyun said.