George F. Babcoke meets students at TU Kosice

The main lecture hall of the Technical University in Kosice, which the steelworks helped to reconstruct and modernize some time ago, was the venue last Friday, February 26th, for a meeting of the students and faculty of the University as well as representatives of the academic community with U. S. Steel Kosice President George F. Babcoke.
In his lecture the President focused above all on issues of translating theoretical knowledge into practice. He spoke of the cooperation between the Company and the University on several research and development projects, and of the work on applied research in the Company's own laboratories aiming to develop products with higher added value and improved quality parameters. He emphasized the constant and combined efforts of specialists to reduce the environmental impact of steel production around the world, and the need to seek new technologies capable of capturing CO2 emissions and of minimizing their incidence. He also mentioned the development of ultra-light steel automobile bodies, and research into new techniques of joining automotive sheets.
The meeting also featured the announcement of results in the competition to find the best model of children's playground in the city ward Kosice-Krasna, which included entries from design students at the Faculty of Arts. The pilot project for a new model of design in children's playgrounds involved cooperation between the City of Kosice, U. S. Steel Kosice, the Faculty of Arts at TU Kosice, and the city ward Kosice-Krasna.

Project in step with the times

Next year the Steel Plants and Hot Strip Mill divisions of U. S. Steel Kosice will be bringing a new, more modern and highly-specialized production management system into operation, called the Manufacturing Execution System or MES. This new information system will make management processes more efficient in the areas of production scheduling, materials monitoring, stores and quality management, and improve auxiliary systems as well. The project named Plant Manufacturing Systems Stabilization (PMSS), which is a pilot for all of the U. S. Steel Corporation plants, has been worked on very actively since November of last year by the future users together with Business Service Center Europe (BSCe).

Steel Plants team are new ice-hockey champions

The last two matches for third place and the champions' title, which took place last Thursday, February 25th, in the Steel Arena, brought to an end the corporate Olympic ice-hockey tournament to find the U. S. Steel Kosice champions for the year 2010. The championships began back on January 30th with matches in two round-robin groups with twelve teams taking part. Places in the best quartet were won by the players from BSCe, Cold Strip Mill, Management and Steel Plants. Last year's champions' title was being defended by the Management players, who met the Steel Plants team in the clash for the prized trophy. After a tough fight the steelmakers won with a close result of four goals to three, and became U. S. Steel Kosice champions for the year 2010. The Management team were the runners-up in second place, and the Cold Strip Mill players took third spot.

Pets' shelter needs assistance

The premises of the Shelter for Abandoned Animals near Haniska, which is run by the Mutual Assistance Union of People and Dogs Civic Association, saw a working meeting on March 2nd between U. S. Steel Kosice President George F. Babcoke and Kosice City Mayor Frantisek Knapik. The representatives of the city administration, the steelworks and the civic association discussed forms of possible assistance for the Shelter, which is currently providing a temporary home for the best part of 150 animals.