Antoine Aygalenq, Head of projects

After my preparatory class, I jumped on the new opportunity to be an apprentice in an engineer school as I really wanted to get away from the books to learn on the field. I joined ArcelorMittal in October 2019 as the head of plant apprentice in Woippy who gave me very diverse projects I could learn a lot from but also helped me network as one of my project spread in the group.

After graduating, I wanted to be on the road to discover all the best practices from our colleagues around Europe. I became a project leader for our Steel Service Centres branch giving the responsibilities of corporate projects like HAKA or QuTrack.

Can you provide an overview of the day-to-day responsibilities of your position?

My main responsibility is carry the plants along the way of their project roll out. I must fully support all plants to give them a clear view on the project roll out plan, the difficulties they may face but also considering. Transparency, clearness and reactivity are the three pillars I try to respect to do a good work.

Alongside the “material” projects, my team is responsible for a big part of the digitalization that occurred in SSC in the past years. First, we’re maintaining an Efficiency centralized dashboard that became the top management reference to have an overview on the plant wealth. Last, we are pushing the digitalization through the HAKA mindset in different departments like Production, Safety or Supply Chain through a new tool called HAKA Viz’. It is new so we’re constantly developing it to always shrink the workload of the plant managers so they can focus on the field.

For you, how does Arcelormittal SSC Europe demonstrate its commitment to supporting professional growth and development of young talent?

Until now, ArcelorMittal SSC Europe has given me opportunities I wouldn’t have thought of. As a student, I could participate and win the improvement challenge like any other project leader. As a young graduate, they supported my choice to continue with another Master degree while giving a central project management position to let me bloom through the scope a European steel industry.

How do you feel our company value and celebrate the diversity of talent among its employees?

The communication has been a important part of the strategy lately enhanced by ceremonies like the Improvement Challenge. This project competition put the spotlight on the best practices among our branch so we can all get better from those ideas. The last trophy has been won by a blue collar from Reims which really illustrates that talents are everywhere, you just need to empower it.

What do you enjoy most about working in the industry?

I’ve never worked anywhere else as an engineer because I can really feel through all the crisis and victories that ArcelorMittal and the steel industry in general is key in the world supply chain. We can see the inter-dependency to crucial day-to-day market like automotive so this is where I want to impulse change and betterment.

A last word?

Man’s greatest strength is each other