Feb 29, 2024

The Association of Iron & Steel Technology (AIST) is an international iron and steel community consisting of 16,600 members in 70 countries. AIST has 22 local members chapters spread across six continents. The Midwest Chapter includes Northwestern Indiana, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa and is chaired by U. S. Steel Gary Works’ Mike Schwentor. Learn more about the chapter here: Midwest Member Chapter. 

On February 13, U. S. Steel Gary Works Area Manager Reliability Tim Vandaveer was presented with the 2023 Reliability Achievement Award (Silver) from the AIST Maintenance & Reliability Technology Committee on behalf of his team and U. S. Steel.

The Gary Works team was honored with this award for their #2 Caster – Stopper Rod Actuator Reliability Improvements. After experiencing an increase in caster terminations caused by actuator delays and leaks on repaired actuators, the #2 Caster Team developed a data path to help the team start solving problems and brought other teams in to help.

The team at Gary Works developed new actuator inspection forms to improve repair communications, adding criteria that will prevent mid-campaign failures and idle time. The actuator manufacturer, an international company, adopted the actuator inspection forms developed by U. S. Steel and implemented across the globe.

“Reliability is a team sport and only teamwork wins the game,” said Gary Works Area Manager Reliability Tim Vandaveer. “The reason that this project was successful was because a large team of people had to work together to understand what the problems were and go back and rework each of the particular failure modes.”

Not only did this team save time and money, but they also improved the industry by developing a data path and Strip and Advise form implemented internationally. U. S. Steel is grateful for the men and women who work hard day-in and day-out to make themselves, their team and the industry better.

Pictured from left to right: John Accurso – Quaker Houghton, Jitendra Sharma – U. S. Steel Gary Works, Carl Garringer – Steel Dynamics, Columbia City, and Timothy Vandaveer – U. S. Steel Gary Works 

Not Pictured: Mike Balicki, Joe Furdeck, Matt Keel, Matt Hamilton, Doug Fritz, Mike Phipps, Brent Parker, Jaya Nwobu, and Jim Phillips – U. S. Steel Gary Works and Scott Tomasic – ABB Inc.