OREANDA-NEWS. November 15, 2011. Since this year, Baosteel International's Southern Company adopted flexible and diversified measures to improved the quality and customer service in a down-to-earth way, thus creating new records of futures orders of automotive sheets. In the first 10 months, the accumulative orders registered a y-o-y growth of 6%, close to that of the last whole year, reported the press-centre of Baosteel.  

Affected by the general economic environment, the automotive market suffers a sustained depression this year, especially in the southern area, the Japanese auto plants affected by the Japanese earthquake reduce or shut down the production one after another, bringing tremendous pressure and challenge to the sales of Baosteel's automotive sheets. Meanwhile, the domestic steelmakers accelerate to catch up and race to occupy the automotive sheet market. Despite so many difficulties, under the energetic support of Automotive Sheet Sales Department, Baosteel International's Southern Company strives to achieve breakthrough in sales under the precondition of guaranteeing the market share.

In March this year, the Japanese earthquake caused the Japanese auto plants in South China to slow down the production cycle and reduce the output by a large margin, therefore the demand for automotive sheets also decreased accordingly. Faced with the adverse factors, Southern Company took the initiatives to seek opportunities to actively facilitate localized production of materials in addition to the commitment of guaranteeing the supply of Baosteel products to the customers at the first time. Even though the order is occasional, Southern Company also goes all out. On the basis of the establishment of supply guarantee team, an emergency response team is also set up to ensure the supply of temporary local substitute material, which ensures the production stability of auto plants.

Southern Company deems the sustained improvement of products as an important link to enhance the service. In the past, many defects occurred in the use of hot-dip galvanized sheets by a user. This year, on the basis of sustained improvement, they strengthened the technical exchange and communication with the user. In addition to implementing the mechanism of regular exchange, the personnels of relevant production process from Baosteel site are invited to go to the users' site, listen to the users' opinions and suggestions, and meet with Baosteel site to devise the corrective measures together. Meanwhile, the users are also invited to Baosteel site, to track and judge the improvement status. Hence the closed loop management of quality improvement is formed, which wins favorable comments from the customers. After hard work, now no defect has been found in the application of hot-dip galvanized sheets by the user in 6 months, which further strengthens the user's confidence in Baosteel products.

Southern Company also intensifies the efforts to tap the demands of automotive components manufacturer, and sets up project teams with auto plants to strengthen the guide of localized materials and jointly drive the application of Baosteel products in automotive components manufacturers. Among which, the components localization ratio of a user is increased, an additional 5000-odd tons of Baosteel products is ordered monthly. Moreover, Southern Company also actively promotes cost reduction with technologies and strengthens the promotion and application of high strength automotive sheets with good effects achieved.