Weekend devoted to volunteering

Ten activities for eleven institutions attracted more than 500 steelmakers, their family members and representatives of our partner organizations to this year's U. S. Steel Kosice Volunteer Days.
The sixth edition of this annual event on May 18 and 19 enabled volunteers to give blood as part of the "Steelmakers' Drop of Blood" donor drive, to contribute to the collection of clothes, bed-linen, kitchen utensils and non-perishable groceries for the Crisis Center and Charity House, and to help with improving conditions at the Rubikon Autistic Center in Kosice-Myslava, the P. J. Safarik University Botanical Gardens in Kosice, the Uralska Street Foster Home in Kosice, the Crisis Intervention Center in Cana, the Sports Area up at Kojsovska hola, the Active Vision House of the Slovakian Union of the Blind and Partially-sighted in Kosice, the Dog Sanctuary of the Union for Mutual Assistance of People and Dogs at Haniska, and the Zoological Gardens at Kavecany near Kosice.

Julius Lang is new ECCA President

USSK General Manager Industries Julius Lang has become the new President of the European Coil Coating Association (ECCA). Already U. S. Steel Kosice's representative at the Association, he was elected to this position at its annual general meeting (AGM), which took place during the ECCA Congress in Spain on May 21 and 22 this year.

Audit confirms proper functioning of QM system

The four-day re-certification audit of our quality management system which took place at the steelworks last week once again confirmed that U. S. Steel Kosice fulfills the international QM standards ISO/TS 16949 and EN ISO 9001. At the closing meeting of the auditors with Company management on Thursday, May 17, also attended by U. S. Steel Kosice President David J. Rintoul, this finding was announced by TÜV SÜD Slovakia Chief Auditor Pavel Hornik.

Corporate safety audit begins

Monday, May 21, saw the beginning at U. S. Steel Kosice of the second of this year's corporate audit focusing on the area of occupational safety and health protection. This audit is concentrating on in-depth verification of programs dealing with life-threatening situations, their implementation and assessment, especially whether employees understand them and behave in accordance with them.
Whereas in the first of this year's audits, the auditors focused mainly on primary production, this time their attention is concentrated on the rolling mills, the Finishing section of production and certain of USSK's subsidiaries. The results of the five-day audit will be presented at the so-called summarizing meeting this Friday morning, May 25.

Conti-caster 1 is 30 years old

Continuous slab-casting line no. 1 at the Steel Plants Division is 30 years old. Conti-casting was officially brought into operation on April 30, 1982, and at that time it was very progressive technology, seeing as the proportion of continuously-cast slabs in industrially developed countries then approached 60 per cent. This trend was picked up in Czechoslovak steelmaking, and in 1974 a contract was signed for the supply of twin-flow curved continuous-casting equipment from the USSR.
A substantial part of this supply originated from the Ural Machine Engineering Plant at Sverdlovsk. By now almost nothing remains of that original line, because during the past three decades it has undergone many reconstructions and modernizations, which have increased its output capacity and operational life.