For 8 years (1973-1982) when I was an engineer and then an assistant manager at technical group, HSM No.1 and No.2, as only one engineer, I had responsibility for the followings;
- To decide how to proceed/dispose coils with every kind of defects such as surface defects (black surface and pickled surface), thickness defects, width defects, profile defects, flatness defects, temperature defects, telescope defects and so on every day. Over 30 years ago pickling lines were among HSM department and so the surface quality of pickled coils for cold mill and for pickled and oiled coil were directly reported to the technical group.
- Those days were the developing stage of Japanese steel industries and there were lots of experiments to develop new materials. And some but not small number of customers demanded high quality, which means beautiful surface and small tolerances in dimensions and in mechanical properties / small temperature tolerances.
But hard wares and soft wares in those days were not good enough as present days. So I wrote directions to operators on a daily basis to cope with the above mentioned requirement. In those days operators did fine tunings and intelligent job to fulfill the directions I made. Beyond doubt I consulted with operators beforehand in case of complicated matters. - Quality improvement was one of my job to reduce the defects above mentioned and also increase product yield, for example:
Solve the problem of surface defects such as rolled in scale, scabs, cracks and so on.
Reduce strip crown drastically for the customer of high carbon steel re-roller.
Control strip profile for tin plate mill.
Minimize width variation to increase yield at pickling line.
And so on.
I was able to fulfill lots of jobs above mentioned. No doubt I worked very hard as an engineer in developing days of Japan, but there was a secret why I, only one engineer, could do too many jobs.
I had technician group comprising around 6-10 people. Some of them prepared thickness charts, width charts, profile charts, FDT charts, CT charts and cut samples of surface defects so that I could decide how to dispose defects coils; changing the coils to out of standard coils, changing to lower grade coils, cutting some length from the coils, scrapping and so on. Also inspections at delivery of pickling lines with 24 hours were assigned to the technical group in those days and so I checked the surface defects information every day.
So I was very busy and wrapped up in my work and I thought it an unreturned job. Because other engineers were engaged in introduction of new equipment and experiments for new technology.
After all HSM technical group, which is Hot Rolling Technology Section at Kawasaki steel, was the longest in my career as an engineer , assistant manager, manager and staff general manager. I engaged too much years in hot strip quality improvement.
Now I am a consultant on HSM, especially familiar with strip surface quality as well as strip crown and flatness thanks to the above mentioned career.