Hanwha Ocean Creates Safe Workplaces with Smart Ideas

On the 10th, award winners are taking a commemorative photo at the automation competition award ceremony held at Hanwha Ocean Geoje Plant. Photo by Hanwha Ocean

Hanwha Ocean is creating safer and more efficient workplaces through an in-house automation competition.

Hanwha Ocean announced on the 12th that it held the awards ceremony for the 'Automation (Low Cost Automation·LCA) Competition' on the afternoon of the 10th at its Geoje plant. At the ceremony, the welding robot 'Rondy' and the 'Safety Harness Buckle Device for Aerial Work Platforms' won the prestigious grand prize.

Hanwha Ocean's LCA competition has been held since 2002 to create safer and more efficient workplaces through automation. The competition is judged in two categories: machinery and equipment for welding, painting, and outfitting, and jigs and fixtures, which are auxiliary tools for manufacturing products.

The grand prize winner in the machinery and equipment category, the Rondy robot (mounted long-arc welding robot), is a robot that automatically welds in narrow spaces where it is difficult for humans to work. It also achieves welding quality equivalent to that of a skilled worker with over three years of experience, helping to overcome the shortage of skilled welders. Moreover, breaking the stereotype that robots can only work indoors, it was developed to operate outdoors for the first time in the shipbuilding industry, resulting in annual cost savings of several hundred million won.

Hanwha Ocean has devoted great effort to production automation using robots. It has developed a series of robots ending with 'di' in their names, such as 'Dandi' developed in 1997, 'Caddy' for welding in narrow areas, and 'Indi,' which is small enough to be carried by a person but highly effective. The newly developed robot 'Rondy' continues this tradition.

The grand prize in the jigs and fixtures category was awarded to the 'Safety Harness Buckle Device for Aerial Work Platforms.' This device prevents the aerial work platform from starting unless the worker has fastened the safety harness and sounds an alarm to confirm it. It is designed to prevent accidents caused by workers not fastening their safety harnesses during high-altitude work. It also has a voice alert function when the weight limit is exceeded, eliminating all risk factors for safety accidents with aerial work platforms and enabling safer high-altitude work.

A Hanwha Ocean official said, "There were many creative ideas infused with decades of employees' experience in this automation competition," adding, "We will consolidate these efforts to create a smart Geoje plant centered on digital technology and robots."

Hanwha Ocean has previously announced a strategy to secure overwhelming competitiveness for sustainable growth in the shipbuilding sector. The plan is to build a ‘smart yard’ based on automation to enhance safety and address the decline in skilled production workers due to demographic changes. They intend to increase productivity through robots and automation and transform the entire shipyard into a massive smart yard based on big data by implementing smart factories and logistics automation.

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