Peter J. Ballaban is new GM Transaction Center
The new General Manager USSK Transaction Center from August 1st is Peter J. Ballaban, replacing David C. Pasquini, who is returning to the USA. Ballaban started working for U. S. Steel in 1988 as a computer programmer. For many years he worked in the internal audit group, later as costs analyst at Mon Valley Works and as financial analyst at USX Corporation. He has held several positions in Straightline, the division created by U. S. Steel as a "virtual" steel-business service center, at U. S. Steel Credit, and later in the invoice analysis and checking section of BSC North America. From June 2007 until his move to Kosice he worked as Director of Transaction Processing in Serbia.
Procurement staff in Pittsburgh
For the first time in the existence of U. S. Steel Corporation's global procurement organization, that is since 2005, at the very end of July a larger group of USSK staff traveled to Pittsburgh for the quarterly Procurement Business Review Meeting. Information on the results for the first half of the year and objectives till the end of 2008 were presented by GM Procurement Martin Tucek, Materials Management Director Juraj Mondik and Procurement Support Director Martina Kovacova. Their reviews represented the work of all the people in the respective departments, and they definitely scored highly in terms of interest in their content and form of presentation. The costs savings particularly in purchased materials and services achieved during the first half-year, presented by Martin Tucek, ranked among the best in the whole Corporation.
Euro conversion project proceeds in the subsidiaries
The euro conversion project is proceeding in the seven subsidiaries of USSK as well as in the parent company. Although the project is being managed in identical ways throughout the whole group, there are still areas that are specific for individual subsidiaries, or which have to be dealt with outside the U. S. Steel Kosice framework. The key area for the success of the project is that of information systems. Five of the seven USSK subsidiaries use the Financial 2000 system in its full extent. Of the remaining two, Refrako uses only certain modules of Financial 2000, while production and commercial management is done using software from the compny Softproject. Obal-Servis uses software from Softip throughout its operations. Conversion of software provided by external firms was classed among the risks of the project at its outset, since USSK involvement in their activities is only indirect. Nevertheless, the external vendors are proving to be responsible in their approach to the task.
