Upgrade Technological Competitiveness! The 26th POSCO Family Technical Conference!
POSCO hosted the 26th POSCO Family Technical Conference at POSTECH on August 20 and 21. The Conference is a special festival for engineers designed to raise the company’s technical competitiveness to the next level. Since it was first held in 1989, the conference has developed into an annual event that stimulate the development of new steel technology and enhance shared growth and customer values by reinforcing technical competitiveness across the POSCO family.
CEO Ohjoon Kwon stated in his opening speech that the key to overcoming current crisis facing POSCO is the ‘realization of technical POSCO’, and that participants should awaken the passions within them. Kwon asked engineers to take responsibility and reinforce the intrinsic competitiveness of steel through solution marketing. Also, he emphasized that “POSCO needs to hold a dominant position over competitors by maintaining an unapproachable technical barrier, and as POSCO is striving to foster the new growth industry through choice and focus, everyone should actively participate in securing a future mega growth engine”. Kwon also encouraged cooperation between engineers and researchers as well as the technical exchange between processes, for the acceleration of technical development.
A Place to Share Information and Discuss Various Topics
On the first day of the conference, 24 sessions focused on clients’ use of products and manufacturing technology were held. 23 experts invited from local and foreign universities, research centers and companies presented theses and shared research results throughout each session. Those from POSCO family companies, outsourcing partners, clients, suppliers, universities, research facilities as well as POSCO employees also participated in the discussions, which made the event more meaningful.
Meanwhile, a technical discussion regarding POSCO’s main issues was held on the 21st. Over 2000 people involved and interested in POSCO were involved in this year’s conference and the participants actively engaged in the discussions! There were 24 sessions held on the first day and 28 on the second, while an overall of 249 theses were presented during these sessions. An outstanding total of 6450 theses have been presented throughout the history of POSCO’s technical conferences. It’s quite a lot, right?
The POSCO Family Technical Awards, a Motivation for Development
At the ‘POSCO Family Technical Awards ‘ held on August 20, POSCO encouraged technical development by awarding 27 projects which achieved outstanding results and contributed to POSCO’s technological competitiveness.
Five projects including “The Establishment of Low-Cost Clean Steel Manufacturing Process based on Operations of Steelmaking Models” received the ‘innovation awards’, which is the top prize. Seven projects including “R&D of the Water Supply System for Reduction of Viscosity Bubbles in Ocean Discharge” received the ‘creative awards’, and eight projects including “The Development of Precise Control Technique for the Secure Supply of World’s Top Directional Iron Loss” received the ‘takeoff awards’. Nominees for the POSCO Family Technical Awards which holds the highest authority amongst those in POSCO Group’s technology unit, are selected strictly and fairly by judges upon standards such as achievement, technology and field applicability. The ‘challenge’ awards, ‘persistence’ awards and ‘unique idea awards’ which were newly established last year, were given to projects which lacked the ability to apply ideas to the field but developed know-hows in the process that could be used for future technological development.
This year, POSCO encouraged employees to produce even more successful results by increasing the reward of the top prize to 150 million KRW, which made the total cost of rewards a staggering 1.29 billion KRW.