GS Caltex Hosts Hackathon to Strengthen Digital Capabilities

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoonju Hwang] GS Caltex will hold a two-day non-face-to-face hackathon event using metaverse tools from the 24th to the 25th.

The hackathon, held for the first time this year, is a competition combining hacking and marathon, where planners and developers form a team to come up with ideas within a limited time and create prototype-level results such as AI analysis, app/web services, and business models.

GS Caltex's hosting of this hackathon event aligns with the management strategies of GS Group and GS Caltex. GS Group declared this year’s management policy as ‘discovering new businesses through strengthening digital capabilities and eco-friendly management,’ and GS Caltex emphasized strengthening competitiveness through digital transformation in its New Year's address earlier this year to ensure stable profit generation.

Prior to this event, GS Caltex collected innovative ideas from employees on applying digital technology to company tasks through an internal contest last month. Through this, various ideas were selected, including a matching platform service for waste plastic disposal, an optimal gas station guidance solution considering surrounding traffic and refueling information, blueprint viewing via QR codes, and a facility health monitoring system configuration.

The selected teams will use the metaverse collaboration tool 'Gather Town' during the hackathon to discuss ideas and implementation methods online with team members. Through Gather Town, they will receive help from professional system developers and data analysts or implement their submitted ideas using their own development capabilities with digital technology. The digitalized ideas from the hackathon will undergo final evaluation and awards, and ideas applicable to business will be supported for concrete commercialization through separate projects.

A GS Caltex official said, "This hackathon event is expected to be an opportunity for employees to share the possibilities and necessities of digital transformation through diverse experiences."

Meanwhile, GS Caltex is enhancing competitiveness in production processes by integrating digital technologies such as Digital Twin and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Digital Twin is a technology that implements a virtual factory identical to the actual factory in a virtual space. It has been applied to GS Caltex's Yeosu plant, improving operators' driving capabilities and productivity through driving training simulators and real-time process optimization.

Additionally, GS Caltex is discovering items where AI can be introduced in production processes and is building AI models in areas such as production planning optimization, process operation optimization, and early warning of process and equipment abnormalities.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.