Hankook: HK-KAIST collaboration widens

Under extensions to an agreement first signed in 2019, tyre maker Hankook and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) will continue and expand operations at the HK-KAIST Digital Innovation Center, which is located within the Hankook Technodome in Daejeon, Korea.

Hankook & Company Co., Ltd., the holding company of Hankook Tire & Technology Co., Ltd., formalised the agreement’s extension with KAIST at a ceremony held at the Technodome yesterday. Through the extended cooperation that takes effect immediately, Hankook and KAIST will focus on expanding the joint study using various data from seven new projects.

The partners will also cooperate to develop innovative technologies and promote creative talent that meet the needs of industrial sites. Moreover, Hankook & Company is running its own executive training programme for digital innovation to improve internal digital capabilities as well as training programmes to foster in-house artificial intelligence (AI) and big data expertise.

Projects that address innovation in production and R&D

KAIST is the leading science and technology university in South Korea. The agreement initially signed in 2019 established HK-KAIST Digital Innovation Center, a joint venture based on industry-academia cooperation to accelerate R&D and digital technology competence through digital transformation. Prominent professors from KAIST, led by Professor Youngjae Jang of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, who also serves as head of the Digital Innovation Center, have been closely involved in the projects that address innovation in production and R&D through the application of new digital technologies.

In its first two years, the HK-KAIST Digital Innovation Center carried out 12 research projects. Hankook says these have “led to significant, immediately adoptable achievements” that benefited its R&D and production capabilities. A few examples includes a Virtual Compound Design (VCD) System, which predicts the characteristics of tyre compounds using AI, Automatic Inspection Process applied with digital sensors, and Hankook Condition Monitoring System Plus (CMS+) which detects facility anomaly in advance using AI and IoT.