Due to free spring back, laser forming is an effective non-contact forming technique for hard forming materials. A desired shape is obtained by residual plastic strain which is induced by thermal stresses depending on multiple laser scanning. In this study, the combination of experimental and numerical analysis is employed to investigate the temperature distribution and bending angle of the dual phase (DP980) high strength steel sheet. The edge effect of six cases of laser scanning process involving 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10-time laser scanning are investigated by analyzing their bending angle relative variations and transverse plastic strains. It is found that the edge effect at the middle part of laser scanning line reduces with the increasing number of laser scanning cycles. It is attributed to the fact that the relative variation of the residual plastic strain reduces with the increase of laser scanning cycles. To efficiently reduce the edge effect of DP980 steel sheet, a locally repeated scanning strategy is proposed. The numerical simulation results indicate that the edge effect reduces significantly in the 10-time laser scanning process and the average bending angle simultaneously increases around 20% under the new laser scanning strategy.