UrBC, Magnitogorsk, November 6, 2019. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) recently held a job skills contest for the plant’s best sintering shop workers of the year 2019, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports.

‘This is the second time MMK has coordinated a contest like this. Until last year, our sintering shop employees had no opportunity of competing professionally within the context of job skills championships, which was not the case for all the other metallurgical workers. The problem was that the obligatory practical challenge section of the contest was difficult to complete. However, we found a way out a year ago, thanks to multimedia technologies. Personal Corporate Cadre Training Center and the sintering shop’s management did manage to put together a contest that both MMK employees and representatives of other metallurgical enterprises took part in. There were nineteen contestants from MMK, Mechel, Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), and Severstal all in all,’ the company says.

As many as twenty-six people joined in this year, including some contestants from yet another (fifth) company Tulachermet. According to one of the judges and MMK’s Senior Engineer at Tech Research Center Sergey Krivitsky, the contests help participants find out more about how other metallurgical enterprises work, learn something new and interesting from the fellow workers, and grow as professionals.

At the end of the competition, the third prize went to NLMK’s Dmitri Orlov, the second one to Maxim Musin from MMK’s Sintering Department; Severstal’s Sergy Sedov won gold as Sintering Shop Operator of The Year 2019.