Glossary

Alloying: An alloy is produced when a main chemical element (e.g. iron) is mixed with other chemical elements. In the case of carbon steel these may include manganese, ferro-vanadium or silicon.
Bake-hardening steels: Steel which gains further strength during the paint baking process. In as-delivered condition, these steels with their relatively low yield strength offer good cold-forming properties.
Balanced scorecard: Balanced scorecard is an integrated management method based on key performance indicators which analyzes the strategy of a company or company unit as well as relevant external and internal aspects and identifies how these interact.
Basic oxygen converter: Refractory lined vessel for refining (converting) hot metal into steel. Top blowing of oxygen reduces the carbon content of the steel to levels as low as 0.1%.
Blast furnace: In the blast furnace, iron oxide-bearing ores are reduced and melted to produce iron. Charge materials are coke, coal as reducing agents and burden. The burden contains the iron ore components and additives.
Blended learning: Blended learning is learning which combines online and face-to-face approaches with the help of new information and communication media.
Burden: The blast furnace charge, consisting of iron-oxide bearing materials and fluxes.
Capital employed: Interest-bearing invested capital.
Cash flow: Cash flow from operating activity is the sum of pre-tax income, depreciation/amortization and allocations to accrued pension liabilities. It characterizes the volume of funds generated in any one period which are available for financing investments and for dividend payments.
Casting-rolling line: Advanced production line based on thin-slab technology for the production of hot strip from molten steel in one production step. This saves energy by shortening the production process and guarantees consistent end product quality.
Coal/coking coal: As coal is a natural product, different types of coal are classified according to their content of volatile components. Coking coal is washed fine coal suitable for coking purposes. Ground into powder, various types of coal are also injected into the blast furnace as substitute reducing agents.
Coating: Metallic (zinc, nickel, aluminum) or organic (paint, plastic) coating of flat carbon steel products to provide corrosion protection.
Coke/coking plant: In coking plants, high-grade coking coal is heated in coke oven batteries in the absence of air. This drives off the volatile components to produce coke. This carbon material (purity approx. 97%) is used as a reducing and carburizing agent in the blast-furnace production of iron. In addition to its properties as a fuel, coke retains its shape at high temperatures and facilitates the flow of gas in the blast furnace.
Cold rolling: Forming process carried out following hot rolling or strip casting. The material is reduced to a pre-defined thickness in the roll gap of the cold rolling mill by the application of high pressure between two rolls. Tandem cold rolling mills for carbon steel consist of several closely spaced mill stands. In cold rolling, the forming temperature is always below the recrystallization temperature, which makes subsequent annealing necessary.
Cold strip: Cold-reduced flat product in widths of up to 2,000 mm and thicknesses of 0.3 to approx. 4 mm. The advantages of cold-rolled strip over hot strip lie in better surface quality, closer tolerances and thinner sections.
Continuous casting: Process for producing slabs from molten steel. The steel is cast via a tundish into a cooled mold which determines the dimensions (width, thickness) of the slab. The cast strand emerges from the mold with a solidified skin and is guided by rolls through a cooling section before being cut by torches into required slab lengths.
Cost of capital: Strategically defined minimum return required by capital providers. The weighted average cost of capital is derived from the cost of interest for the company’s equity and borrowed capital. In addition, a risk premium for the relevant market has to be taken into consideration. For ThyssenKrupp Steel a weighted average cost of capital of 10% (9.5% from 2005/2006) has been determined.
CO₂ emissions: Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a greenhouse gas released as a consequence of burning fossil fuels (crude oil, natural gas, coal), deforestation/fire clearance, agriculture and cement production.
Crude steel: Crude steel can be in liquid or solid form. In both cases it is a raw product. In the liquid condition it is used for ingot teeming, continuous casting and cast steel production. In solid form it is classified as slabs or ingots according to its cross section.
EBT: Earnings before taxes and minority interest.
Emission: Emission is the term for the release of substances, noise, vibrations, light, heat, radiation, odors, etc. into the environment which are relevant to the protection of the environment.
Engineered blanks: Tailored blanks with non-linear laser-welded seams, allowing components to be tailored even more accurately to the requirements of vehicle designers.
First-stage processing: Initial processing of steel products in line with customer requirements, e.g. slitting, cutting to length, blanking and other forms of processing.
Flat steel: Flat steel is produced in a multi-stage process. The starting products are rectangular slabs produced in the meltshop by continuous casting. These are rolled at temperatures of 1,200°C to final thicknesses of up to 1.5 mm. The wide strip produced in this way is either delivered to customers or, if thinner gauges or superior surface quality are required, fed to special units for cold rolling. The functions of the strip can be improved by galvanizing or organic coating with colors or films.
Grain-oriented electrical steel (GO electrical steel): The microstructure of electrical steel comprises body-centered cubic crystallites. In a series of rolling and annealing treatments, the crystals are lined up in parallel with the direction of rolling to produce steel for applications requiring good magnetic properties in one direction, e.g. transformers.
Granulated blast furnace slag: Blast furnace slag is a product of ironmaking. In slag granulation units the slag undergoes accelerated cooling under controlled water flow, thus forming vitreous solidified slag sand. Granulated slag sand is mainly sold to the cement industry for cement production.
Heavy plate: Flat steel in gauges of 3 to 140 mm. It is either hot-rolled on four-high stands or cut to length from hot-rolled strip.
High-strength and ultra-high-strength steels: Steel grades which display good forming properties despite having extreme strength. Their properties are achieved by a combination of hard and soft microstructure phases. A distinction is made between dual-phase, multi-phase and complex-phase steels.
Hot blast stove: The hot blast stove is an ancillary unit of the blast furnace. Its job is to preheat and store the blast air for the furnace. The hot blast stove consists of a storage chamber and an external combustion chamber containing ceramic burners.
Hot-dip coating: In this process, steel sheet is coated with zinc, zinc/iron or aluminum by immersing it in a bath of molten metal.
Hot metal (pig iron): Hot metal or pig iron is the main product of the blast furnace process and is made by reducing or smelting oxidic iron ores. Reduction and smelting are performed by reducing gas, formed from carbon-bearing materials such as coke, coal or oil, and the heat released when the hot blast burns these materials. Hot metal consists of roughly 94% iron, 4.7% carbon, 0.4% silicon, 0.2% manganese, 0.04% sulfur and other trace elements. The hot metal is tapped at temperatures of roughly 1,480 to 1,500 °C. In refractory-lined torpedo ladles that minimize energy losses the liquid metal is transported to the steelmaking shops where it is processed into steel.
Hydroforming: Innovative forming process using a pressurized fluid in a closed die to produce complex shapes, e.g. from tubular starting material.
Immission: The term “immission” (Lat. immittere, to send in) refers to the impact of emissions caused directly or indirectly by human activity, e.g. on eco systems, people, animals or plants. Immissions are environmental impacts. They include mainly air pollution, noise, odors, vibrations, light, radiation, heat.
Iron: Chemical symbol: Fe, density 7.9 g/cm³. It is the fourth most common element and the second most common metal in the earth’s crust (4.7%). It is found only in the form of oxides as a chemical compound with oxygen. The best-known iron oxides are magnetite and hematite.
Iron ore: Iron ores mostly contain large shares of valueless rock known as gangue. To separate the ore from the gangue, the mined material is fed through specially designed crushing units to produce fine ore. Larger pieces can be used directly as lump ore.
Local content: Share of a product procured from a local supplier.
Long products: Typical long products are bar, wire, sections, beams and rails.
Magnesium: Magnesium is a strong, silvery lightweight metal around a third lighter than aluminum. The metal does not occur naturally in elementary form but in the form of compounds such as carbonates, silicates, chlorides and sulfates.
Medium strip: Like wide hot strip, medium strip is produced from slabs in a continuous rolling process. However, it is produced in widths of up to 700 mm compared with over 2,000 mm for wide hot strip.
Metallurgy: The science that deals with the extraction of metallic materials from ores. Iron and steel metallurgy can be divided into the two areas liquid and solid. The former concerns preparation, melting and alloying (secondary metallurgy), the latter forming (casting and solidification).
Microalloyed steels: Steels containing very small quantities of alloys which are effective in these small quantities, such as niobium, titanium or boron.
Net financial liabilities: Borrowed capital less operating assets, cash and cash equivalents.
Net gearing: The ratio of net financial liabilities to equity capital on the balance-sheet date (the lower the ratio, the higher the share of equity in interest-bearing capital employed).
Non grain oriented electrical steel (NO electrical steel): With this type of electrical steel, the crystals are randomly oriented. Unlike grain-oriented electrical steel, it is used in electrical machinery with rotating components requiring similar magnetic properties in all directions, e.g. motors and generators.
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OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer): An OEM is a company which produces products which are marketed under the brand of a different company.
Particulates (PM10): Particulates (PM10) The term PM10 is used for particulates with an aerodynamic diameter of less than or equal to 10 micrometers.
Pelletizing: Very fine ores are mixed with a little water and binders in drums or disk pelletizers to form balls between 11 and 12 mm in diameter. These green pellets are then fired to form pellets.
Recycling: Returning a material or component to the production cycle to make a new end product. Through recycling, scrap becomes a raw material for steel production. Steel is a particularly environmentally friendly material due to its one-hundred percent recyclability with no loss of quality. Recyclability is an important material property.
Reduction/Reduction process: Chemical process to remove oxygen. Oxygen is eliminated from a compound by introducing an ion with higher oxygen affinity as a new partner. The most important reducing agent in steel production is carbon.
Return on capital employed (ROCE): This performance indicator represents the ratio of income before taxes and minority interest, interest and taxes (EBIT) to capital employed.
Shaft furnace: Unit for producing hot metal from previously non-recyclable iron-bearing steel mill circulating materials.
Sheet cut from strip: Sheet cut from hot-rolled strip, chiefly in thicknesses up to 15 (max. 20) mm.
Simultaneous and concurrent engineering: Close technical cooperation with the automobile industry for material- and production-integrated body development.
Sinter plant: In the sinter plant the fine-grained ores and concentrates occurring in ore preparation are sintered (agglomerated) in a continuous process into lumps of suitable size for the blast furnace.
Slab: Compact block of crude steel, generally the product of the casting process in the steel meltshop which serves as feedstock for the hot rolling mills for the production of rolled hot strip or plate.
Slag: In every melting process oxidic materials are created which due to their lower specific gravity float on the surface of the molten iron or steel. Undesirable elements separated from the iron oxide are passed into the slag. When solidified, slag is glass- or stone-like.
Space frame: Body-in-white design using steel tubes with weight advantages over conventional stampings.
Steel mill slag: Steel mill slag is a liquid material arising during steel production which is poured into slag beds. These slags are processed in different ways depending on their subsequent use. The main uses for these slags are as road and waterway building materials and as fertilizers.
Supply chain management: Supply chain management looks at the entire supply chain of a company to optimize the flow of information and materials between internal and external suppliers, production, distributors and customers.
Tailored blanks: Blanks made of individual sheets of the same or different grade, thickness or coating, joined together e.g. by laser welding. Tailored blanks are formable and are produced according to specific customer requirements.
Tailored strips: Steel strips of different grade, thickness or coating joined together by laser welding, wound to coils of up to 15 metric tons. Used in the automobile, construction and furniture sectors.
Tailored tubes: Thin-walled tubes hydroformed to the desired part shape. Tailored tubes permit new designs in automobile construction.
ThyssenKrupp Steel best: Program to enhance efficiency in all areas of the company. Best stands for “business excellence in service and technology”.
Tinplate: Tinplate is thin steel sheet whose surface is coated with tin or chromium by hot-dip or electrolytic coating processes.
Walking beam furnace: Unit for heating slabs prior to hot-rolling. The slabs are gently lifted through the furnace zones on hydraulic conveyor systems to prevent surface damage.
Wide hot strip: Hot-rolled product with rectangular cross section and width of at least 600 mm which is wound into coils directly after rolling. Produced in hot rolling mills (wide hot strip mills), mainly in a continuous process, in thicknesses of 1.5 to 25.00 mm and widths up to 2,000 mm. Wide hot strip is mainly used as a starting material for cold-rolled sheet and cut-tolength plate.
Wide hot strip mill: Continuous production line consisting of one or more roughing stands and a finishing train with seven finishing stands.
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