I am a Junior ChBE and am going to be entering the job market fairly soon and I was very disappointed to see that the company I interned at this summer, ArcelorMittal Steel, is going through some very tough economic times. They are the world’s largest steel producer and produce about 10% of the world’s steel. I have been in steady contact with my supervisor since the summer has ended, because I really enjoyed the workplace and I would not mind working for them as my full-time job when I get out of school.
Recently he has been telling me that a lot of parts of the plant are being shutdown over the recent months, and this was a bit surprising to me, because I worked in their East Chicago, IN, plant which is the largest of all of their facilities in the U.S. I have read recently in the Economic Times, that
"The decision has been taken in view of the global economic meltdown that has hit the company's finances and substantial drop in demand of steel.I expected the steel industry to be down but not by these drastic numbers that I have been reading. Also, just this weekend I read that it is reported that at least 450 people, out of about 3,500 that work at the East Chicago plant, will be laid off for at least 3 weeks starting February 20th. This was very disappointing news for me to hear especially because when I was there it seemed like business was doing well, and they had hired more interns than they ever had and had expected to hire us for full-time when we got out of school, but due to the circumstances now I don’t know what to expect.
ArcelorMittal had recently announced a cut its production in North America by 40 percent.”
This news is especially interesting considering in class we have recently learned about short term shutdowns. With the car market severely down, which is the leading consumer of ArcelorMittal steel, it seems as if it is just not financially feasible to keep some parts of the plant operational. I would never really expect any long term exits from ArcelorMittal, with it having the largest blast furnace on the western hemisphere, and just because it has so much sunk cost involved.
Even though I am very distraught to hear all of this news, I am fairly confident that the economy will improve in the near future. I know that ArcelorMittal is a very well-built company and I hope they will recover from this economic recession, and business will pick up by the time I am ready to graduate next June.
The short term shutdowns that you experienced at ArcelorMittal steel seem to be prevelant at many american production facilities. At the plant that I worked at, they decided to go on 3-5 day shifts where the entire plant was closed for 3 days and then producing for 5 days before being closed for 3 days again. They would rather do this than build up inventory that might not ever be consumed. Instead they produced just enough to fill current orders. This solved the demand problem that the factory was facing by decreasing supply while still operating.
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