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trailer world issue One 2008

Photo:Lenke Title Issue One 2008 7Issue One 2008 7 A really big blast In Germany’s steel kitchens there are also steel chefs. When manufacturing their products they use carefully selected raw materials, process the ingredi- ents according to their own recipes and maintain the reputation of the establishment at the highest level. Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH is one such location for specialists. In the fine steel cuisine of Lower Saxony there are no mass-pro- duced items from the far East, but quality goods for discriminating customers. Dr. Sebastian Bross is one of the ‘chefs de cuisine’ here. Like many of his peers, the 30-year-old has his engineering degree on his business card. For the Head of Marketing, mechanical engi- neering and physical metallurgy form the basis for a business that is becoming ever more sophisticated in terms of technology and logi- stics. “Customers are interested in the component, not the material that it is made of,” says Bross, describing the demands placed on the work of the engineer, which lies behind the manufacturing pro- cess. Production processes, ways and means of loading and safety aspects are the deciding factors for the material properties deman- ded, and hence for the steel used for the component. There are a wide variety of steel types available. The product range stretches from black hot-rolled wide strip through organi- cally coated cold-rolled thin sheet. For higher-quality steels such as those produced by Salzgitter Flachstahl, it is necessary to be able to reproduce the process control across all units. Products include 1.6-metre wide steel coils weighing up to 32 tonnes, known as mo- ther coils, which in the course of further machining, some of which is carried out by Stahl-Service-Center, are split, are cut and thus made up into useful preliminary products. Depending on the quali- ty, the 1.6-kilometre long rolls of steel are turned into cars, refrige- rators or hubcaps for the new BPW ECO plus 2.

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