The company has operated a special unit to push forward the effective development of technology in parallel with the continuous expansion of facilities at different step, which was initiated from the beginning of the company's establishment.
In 1968, which was not long after the establishment of the company, the Technology Department was inaugurated, which was reorganized as a larger unit named Technology Division after the operation of Pohang steelworks in 1973.
In 1977, Technical Research Laboratories was opened as a result of benchmarking on world famous steel research institutes outside the country, with a view to secure the technology development independently.
In 1986, the Division of Production and Technology was eventually set in motion as a part of headquarter that covers company production plans, technology development and environment-related tasks.
To develop more than four hundred fundamental process technologies needed during the early stages, the ¡®5 Year Plan of Technology Development' was launched. On the other hand, as a part of activating the technology development, holding technical seminars for the purpose of settling currently faced problems, could make great achievements.
The research structure of technology development was reorganized to a larger unit following the inauguration of Research Institute of Industrial Science & Technology in 1987, Further in order to convert the previous technology development system, which focused on catching up with the advanced technologies, to the independent technology development system and to form a essential glue of technology development, the event of holding annual technical seminars in each technical session was adopted from 1988.
For this goal mentioned above, the ¡°POSCO Iron & Steel Conference¡± inviting financed enterprise as well as customer companies has been held as a largest scale ever held in the national steel industry during the past twenty years.
The technical exchange meeting with advanced steel companies worldwide has started from 1974, and maintained mutually friendly relationship up to now. The contribution of the technical exchange cooperation with world major players has been remarkable to the technical improvement.
In 2007, it has not only completed the world's first Continuous Hot Rolling Equipment and Operation Technologies by using super plastic shear deformation joining technology, but also completed the world first commercial FINEX plant with 1.5 million tons of annual capacity, which is the most precious output delivered by the strategic research activities of the company, marking the historic technical innovation of one hundred years of steel history.
