The Invincible Millennium

The Millennium team of Lipetsk State Technical University became the winner of the final of the V International Engineering Case-in Championship among undergraduates and postgraduates in Moscow. The final consisted of five independent leagues. The four Lipchans had no equal in the Metallurgy League.

The team included not only "pure" metallurgists, undergraduates of the departments of metalworking by pressure and metallurgical technologies Vitaly Chigarev and Alexander Gordeev, respectively, but also representatives of other professions. Alice Potanina, a fifth–year chemist, performed the functions of an ecologist, and Denis Prikhodko, a master's student at the Faculty of Automation and Computer Science, assumed the role of an economist.

"Such diversity has become the key to our success,– says team captain Vitaly Chigarev. – Those teams, which included only metallurgists, sometimes looked one-sided, but we presented our project from different aspects.

The Millennium team won a ticket to the finals by winning the regional qualifying stage of the championship. The guys confessed: They had never had to solve such cases before, and many things were new to them. Nevertheless, they successfully solved all the tasks.

NO TIME FOR SENTIMENT

 The task at the final stage was different from the qualifying one, in which the main task was to provide metal products to a particular region, specifically the Samara region. In the final, the scale was completely different, the teams had to reach the national and global levels with high-tech products.

– At the enterprise that we had to build this time in the Nizhny Novgorod region, it was necessary to process non–ferrous metal, and difficulties arose with this, - Alexander Gordeev told. – After all, the Lipetsk region does not process non-ferrous metals, and the university does not have a department of non-ferrous metallurgy. I had to study technology from books and through the Internet.

Sometimes there were fierce disputes between the team members.

– In order to provide the plant with its own electricity as much as possible, it was necessary to recycle a huge amount of solid household waste. I insisted on the figure of 300 thousand tons per year, Alice, who is responsible for the environment, strongly opposed it," the captain told about the twists and turns of the team. – In the end, they didn't give in to the girl, they accepted my offer. There's no time for sentiment here: the result is more important.

A BOOST TO CAREER GROWTH

 The residents of Lipetsk took a modern metallurgical plant, commissioned in January this year in Mexico, as the basis of their project. There are no analogues in the world yet, but even here the guys have found an opportunity to improve production.

– In the Year of Ecology, the compilers of the case paid great attention to the environmental aspect. We have introduced a modern waste recycling complex that produces 90 percent less emissions of harmful substances than most of the currently operating ones," Alexander Gordeev noted.

In the final, Millennium beat its competitors by all accounts. The Lipetsk team presented a more modern technology, better justified the economic part of the project, and the presentation of the project was more convincing than that of the other finalists. So the victory of the Lipchans was well deserved.

The winners have already felt the fruits of their triumph.

"I was transferred to an engineering position, they began to involve me in the organization and planning of the production process, and included me in the personnel reserve," admits Vitaly Chigarev, who successfully combines his studies at LGTU with work at the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine. – I hope this victory will be an impetus for further career growth for all of us.

Lipetsk Newspaper Publishing House