Students Industrial Placement in Germany
At the end of 2013 our university hosted "Cemclub" workshop. One of the participants was a German company ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions - a longtime partner of Cement Technology Department. Head of the Department Ivan Borisov appealed to the company's representative Waldemar Klassen to organize students industrial placement in Germany. ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions met our university halfway and started to organize the trip, for which we are sincerely grateful! A short time later the most diligent students were called to the department and were told that in April they would fly to Germany. I was lucky to be among those students. All documents for this special trip were prepared in an extremely short period owing to the Department staff. And April came insensibly ... Me and twelve students went on business trip under the guidance of Head of the Department of cement technology and composite materials, Assoc.professor, Doctor of technical sciences Ivan Nikolaevich Borisov and Ph.D., Olga Mandrikova, a senior lecturer. In high spirits we arrived in Germany and at the airport we were met by Waldemar Klassen, a ThyssenKrupp employee, whose career is closely linked with Russia. He accompanied us during the whole period of our stay in Germany, and due to his excellent knowledge of the Russian language, we were all felt at home. Generally, we were astonished by the friendly helpful reception. On the first evening we gathered in the courtyard of the hotel, where we were staying, and Waldemar with his family arranged for a fun sport competition for us. Having spent a great time, we passed to a conversation in which we discussed the scheduled events and, at the same time getting to know each other better. Waldemar’s wife prepared a picnic for us, everything was very tasty, especially after active participation in sport competitions. For the following day we had a lot of things to do, so, it was decided to go to bed early after a tiring trip. So, the first day started early in the morning. We were expected to visit the head office of ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions in Beckum. We met by the company managerial staff, and we went to the big hall, where they held a presentation of the whole company , particularly on cement separation, which is of greatest interest to us as students. At the end of the presentations, we asked questions, and all company employees explained the things we were interested in. It was further decided to move from theory to practice.
ThyssenKrupp is one of the largest developers and manufacturers of equipment for the cement industry, and so the next item on our work program was a visit to the workshops to observe the process of making huge industrial machines and units. It was decided to start with the first phase - production of individual parts. Here we saw a huge number of parts of different sizes arranged on the production platform. The production process is completely automated, and the use of the human factor as close to zero as possible. Huge machines ranging in length from 1 to 10 meters and more are able to independently perform various operations on rough parts and, ultimately, to obtain the necessary item for a particular unit. But without human help these monsters metalworking and would not be able to turn a nut ring. Each machine is operated by a person, under whose strict control a 4 meters high milling machine becomes a delicate instrument. It is an operator who programs all tasks and methods of processing. In addition two people control each part, because the cost of failure is too high. Miscalculation by a hundredth of a millimeter leads to faulty production and delay in producing a separate unit for up to 9 months. It is not just "monetary losses", but also has a negative impact on the prestige of the company’s name, so a lot of attention is paid to control. Next we go to the following step - assembling and adjustment of individual components and entire machines. Above the ceiling heavy grab cranes are moving, work is in full swing, but no hurry is allowed. Tey are Germans after all! Everything is hasteless and calm. After assembly, all units are tested and assigned a quality certificate. However, our German friends have prepared a cultural program for us. After a walk around the factory we went to the City of Muenster. There we had a small tour of the center and were told the story of the city. As it turned out the name Munster was transformed over the years from the word “monastery”. The historic center has not been practically preserved since the Second World War, but has been restored, and we were able to see almost original downtown.
Munster is a city of students, there are large educational institutions, as well as a city of bicycles, which are just everywhere. For 300,000 residents there are about 500,000 bicycles. When you look at 14-15 century buildings you need to look at the road from time to time because of high risk "to be run over". We had a trop to Villa Hugel - family villa of Krupps - the founders of the company Thyssen Krupp and later moved to Dusseldorf - the final destination of our trip.