For 45 days until June 19 to sharpen competitive edge in product quality Changwon Specialty Steel, a local maker of various special steel products including stainless steel wire rods, began on May 6 to streamline and repair its stainless wire rod mill, which will take 45 days until June 19. First of all, the company started the streamlining works on its stainless steel wire rod mill under a timetable for completion on June 8, which include the installation of a reducing and sizing mill (RSM) and a direct solution treatment (DST) furnace. In this connection, the company is conducting the dismantling works and reassembling works of the existing production lines. The RSM, which is the high-speed rolling mill that makes it possible to produce wire rods in accurate dimensions, will be situated at the rear side of a finishing block of its wire rod mill.With the installation of RSM, the Changwon-based special steel maker is expecting to see an effect of raising its output by more than 35,000 tons of wire rods per year with precise dimensions in diameters through a high-fast rolling process. The DST furnace for wire rods, which enables the company to do direct heat treatment in the rolling process of wire rods precisely rolled at the RSM, is expected to bring about an effect of reducingwire rod production process and improve the internal structure as well as surface quality of wire rods. In addition, it is expected to sharply reduce energy cost as it will finish the process of heat treatment on wire rods spread at a high temperature. An official at Changwon Specialty Steel said that the facility streamlining works of its stainless wire rod mill this time would be much helpful for the company to develop high value-added wire rods and sharpen its competitive edges in production cost and product quality, which is also expected to be much conducive to the enhancement of its customers’ competitiveness. Together with installation of the RSM and DST furnace, the company has a plan to conduct the trial run of the new facilities and large-scale repair works on other facilities for 11 days from June 9 through 19, according the firm, which is expecting the facility streamlining works and large-scale repair works of the stainless wire rod mill would give more elasticity to its ongoing mid-term technical development projects. To cope with the growing inflow of Chinese steel products and strengthen thefoundation for growth in the future, the company has recently made it full-scaled to developits six major strategic products, eight core technologies and seventeen new products by making facility investments in the construction of its forging shop, the introduction of argon oxygen decarburization (AOD) facilities, a horizontal and vertical mill for the production of flat bars and a tandem mill together with the installation of cutters and cooling dies in the tool steel mill in addition to RSM and DST furnace. jhyou@snmnews.com