Hyundai Steel has awarded the 2022 Challenger Award, an in-house award given in recognition of an outstanding achievement by Hyundai Steel personnel, to the developers of a new lightweight full-hard product for steel boxes. The merits of this new product include its light weight, which drives down production costs, as well as the use of widely available materials and an improved yield.
The steel box, a structure used in international shipping, is typically manufactured from 30 kg of hot-rolled steel. The full-hard steel that Hyundai Steel has newly developed for manufacturing steel boxes is a hardened and thinned version of the aforesaid 30 kg hot-rolled steel, weighing 45 kg.
The new product will increase Hyundai Steel’s productivity and reduces unit requirements and purchase costs for customers. Hyundai Steel’s suppliers have also pointed out greater convenience in their contributions to the manufacturing of the new product.
The typical full-hard steel is a hot-rolled steel sheet that is not annealed after cold rolling and weighs about 60 kg to 70 kg. Therefore, the Cold Rolled Steel Development Team set out to develop full-hard steel weighing around 45 kg. They succeeded by replacing the low-carbon steel CQ1 material with the ultra-low-carbon steel CQ3, and adjusting the cold-rolling pressure drop ratio for compatibility with mass production.
In order for customers to use the new product, the Automotive Application Technology Team in turn communicated with them to fix any concerning issues. One issue was that the change of the materials reduced the welding strength, so improvements were made to increase the welding strength to meet customer qualifications.
The development project began when Hyundai Steel’s thin hot-rolling plant shut down in 2020. In that year, the annual demand for steel boxed was around 70,000 tons and it is expected to increase to 140,000 tons by 2024.
The large number of ultra-thin materials used in the manufacturing of steel boxes reduces productivity. Thus, to improve productivity, a business model for utilizing a redundant 530,000-ton full-hard steel production capacity was set. It was a solution that increased hot-rolling production and reduced additional costs. The productivity of steel box manufacturing was also boosted.
The project’s success is owed in part to Hyundai Steel’s agile organizational culture. Hyundai Steel provides an environment where the company’s management and working personnel can cooperate on an equal footing, for the success of such projects. The new full-hard product is the fruit of an alliance between 11 teams responsible for sales, manufacturing, operations, development, applications, and other areas.
“Most projects can’t be accomplished by one department alone. I hope the success of this project sets an example for others to follow, by embracing Hyundai Steel’s agile organizational culture and cooperation between departments,” said Lee Kyong-ho, who participated in the project.