Pulmuone is speeding up its digital transformation with an app overhaul and expanded use of AI. At its regular shareholders meeting, it is appointing a digital transformation expert as an outside director in a move to strengthen online competitiveness and build an AI-centred management system.

Pulmuone plans to hold its regular shareholders meeting on March 31 and appoint new outside director Sojung Kim (김소정). The nominee previously served as head of the integrated marketing division (CMO) at eBay Korea, chief executive of Delivery Hero Stores Korea and vice president of Delivery Hero Korea's new business division, and deputy head of Hana Bank's digital group.

The appointment is seen as a move to strengthen expertise at the board level, beyond hands-on digital transformation (DX). The company expects Kim to contribute to Pulmuone's AI transition strategy, citing her experience in digital strategy and service advancement across e-commerce, platforms and finance.

◆Recruiting outside directors and reshuffling executives accelerates shift to an AI-centred organisation

Pulmuone's AX innovation began in 2020, when it started pushing digital transformation. More recently, AI has taken on a larger role to the point where the company first considers whether to apply AI to every task across the group. After focusing since 2020 on digitising analogue-centred systems through DX, it now aims to shift to AX by applying AI to digitised systems to make them autonomous.

Based on this, the company set up an AX innovation office in December last year and carried out strategic reassignments through executive appointments. The move is aimed at building an organisational foundation to expand AI use across the group. Sung-hoon Kim (김성훈), who leads the AX innovation office, built a cloud career at IBM Korea and joined Pulmuone in 2020, leading the early stages of digital transformation as head of the digital innovation office.

Pulmuone's AX innovation office has established an AI co-worker strategy and is pushing to build a human-AI collaboration system. This year, it plans to build a collaboration system that reflects Pulmuone's business characteristics and embed AI across overall group processes.

In addition, Woo-bong Lee, Pulmuone's overall CEO, has taken charge of the newly created future business division to oversee overall domestic and overseas operations, and the company has appointed Young-hoon Cheon as new CEO. Pulmuone has also reshaped its management system around future businesses and AI.

◆From app overhaul to catering operations, AI use expands across the board

Pulmuone has recently expanded AI application across customer touchpoints and overall business operations. It has fully overhauled the Designmeal app, a personalised meal plan management service, and widened the scope of AI use.

Pulmuone introduced digital tour content at its Eumseong tofu plant this month. It expects the content to present detailed processes that are difficult to check at a glance in the actual factory through illustrations and video, and to show the tofu-making process intuitively.

Pulmuone is also stepping up AI use in the product development process. In customer experience (CX), it has developed and is applying its own customer review analysis system, AIRS. The system not only collects reviews but also uses AI to classify positive and negative reviews.

It then reflects detailed opinions drawn from the classified reviews in actual product planning and renewal processes. The move is aimed at reading consumer reactions more precisely and linking them to stronger product competitiveness. Pulmuone launched 8 new products and 14 renewed products in 2024 using the AIRS system.

Pulmuone Food & Culture, which runs group catering and concession businesses, is applying AI technology to forecast meal demand in its catering operations. Pulmuone expects the forecasting to reduce food waste and improve operational efficiency, while producing budget-saving effects over the long term. The company explained that, as of last year, it applied AI to 77 percent of all business sites and reduced the error rate versus existing forecasts by 3.8 percent compared with 2024.

A Pulmuone official said, "Pulmuone is using AI not as a simple task but as a strategic tool that connects enterprise-wide experiences." The official added, regarding the outside director appointment, "As part of building an AX transition system, we will actively gather and collaborate on opinions from relevant experts."