Legislation, environmental issues, safety, and the wants of consumers all present challenges to car manufacturers. Corus addresses these challenges by providing not only dedicated metals, but solutions that go well beyond the metals alone. Consequently, Corus is involved with the modern motor car from start to finish. It is an involvement which influences the design, manufacture, and life of the car, affecting its appearance, its performance, and its ultimate end. This approach is evident in Corus’ dedicated metals, its R&D and technical services, its supply-chain management, its public activities, and in the ethos of the company itself. Dedicated metals
Corus creates metals with precise properties to achieve particular performance benefits for car makers and owners. These benefits are realised during the manufacture and life of the car. A few of them are mentioned below. - Bake hardenable metals achieve their performance benefits both during the manufacture of the car and after. They remain highly formable during pressing, but gain dent resistance (a benefit in the finished car) in the paint-stoving process.
- Corrosion resistant metals improve the durability of the finished car.
- Air-cooled steels allow the wheel hub and wheel bearing of a car to be combined in a single forging, a performance benefit which is realised in design, engineering, manufacture and cost, and also in the finished car (lower running costs through less weight).
R&D and technical services
The properties of Corus’ dedicated metals and the solutions that the company offers arise through extensive research, development, and technical services. This work is concerned with the entire process of designing and manufacturing cars and with their subsequent performance.
An important focus for Corus’ work in this area is Corus Automotive Engineering, which employs a team of design specialists recruited directly from the automotive industry. They provide Corus with a viewpoint and expertise which span every aspect of car design. How metals are used in the design and manufacture of cars is as important to Corus as the metals themselves. This is an approach which takes the company beyond materials alone. Corus is widely involved in developing and refining automotive processing technologies, which are ways of fabricating car components to achieve either particular performance characteristics in them or efficiencies in their manufacture, or both. For example, Corus works extensively with hydroforming, a technology which uses liquid under high pressure to form metal. Corus has its own press, is a knowledge provider to the automotive industry through Corus Hyfo, and is a supplier of tubular blanks for hydroforming. Work in such technologies provides the company with constant feedback for future development in metals.
Corus is providing solutions for car makers by looking ahead. Its knowledge-based engineering systems allow materials and structural designs to be created on computer, subjected to simulated events (including forming, hydroforming, and crash impact), and evaluated for performance. The company also does practical testing and pilot production.
Corus supports new and ongoing vehicle development programmes, working with customers to develop tailored specifications for their needs, and giving advice on the best use of metals.
The company’s technical activities extend to major collaborative research and development, such as the series of Ultra Light projects, involving a consortium of 35 major steel companies and Porsche Engineering Services Inc. Supply-chain management
Corus has changed the traditional starting and finishing points of metal supply by tailoring the service and the product to a high degree. Products can enter the car maker’s cycle at first-stage manufacture. Press blanking, for example, can deliver a blank whose shape and dimensions will produce the final component, without subsequent trimming or processing. Metals spend less time with the manufacturer because they arrive later in the process, closer to the moment of use, and more highly developed for that use.
The company’s supply-chain management shortens lead times and simplifies procedures, but improves control at the same time.
The distribution and processing network for the company is focused in Europe. A computer-linked service gives fast and simple access to the entire stock of products and processing capabilities. Information technology and logistics systems can also link customers to vital stages of the process for close monitoring. The downstream processing services range from slitting to trapezoidal blanking and also offer complex tailor-welded blanks. Public activities
Corus involves itself with governmental, academic, professional, and industrial bodies who all influence the form and nature of the car.
The final arbiter for the success of any motor car is the public itself. Commercial success is fundamental to the life of the motor car. Here, too, Corus is pursuing an understanding of the challenges and requirements that will be placed upon the car in future. This pursuit prompted the 2020 Vision nation-wide UK survey at the end of 1999. Corus and the AA asked new car owners (and a panel of motor industry experts) for their opinions on what motoring would be like twenty years from now.
The company also supports initiatives which encourage excellence in the motor car.
In this kind of work, as with its lecture programmes for universities, Corus is involved with the motor car as it is conceived in the minds of present day and future designers and car buyers. Full circle with Corus
The car permeates modern life. It is literally a vehicle for the expression of mobility, freedom, and personality in society. The very depth of its role poses challenges for everyone involved with its manufacture.
As a major producer of materials for the car, Corus takes the view that it must address these challenges. It does this through involving itself in virtually every aspect of car design, manufacture, and performance - becoming a solutions provider as well as a metals provider.
This approach is reflected in an ethos of dedication: dedicated plant and equipment, dedicated products, processing technologies, and supply, and dedicated professionals.
Corus is involved in the motor car - from start to finish.
And that finish is itself just the beginning. The motor car is being re-created continuously, not only in its concept and construction, but in steel and aluminium materials which Corus is constantly developing and which themselves can be recycled at the finish.
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