Gladys Duran-Duran – 2021 Steel Intern Scholar
During the summer of 2021, I was a summer intern at FYMSSSA, a Mexican foundry that manufacture low alloy industrial metal parts, stainless, duplex, cryogenic, nickel-based alloys steels, chromium-nickel and ductile castings for national and international markets like mining, sugar mills, oil extraction, electric power, pumping and valves.
As an intern at the plant, I had the chance to learn more about the foundry manufacturing processes, since melting to machining and heat treatment. Understanding the process from raw materials into a completely machined product gave me a clearer idea of my career, the variables to control in every stage of the production route and how they impact in the products quality. Now I can see, that the result of the 
teamwork between the operators and managers of each area is quality products. I was primarily involved in heat treatment area, developing a research project for a reheating furnace and the implementation of temperature control during the heating in every heat treatment process.
I am very grateful to the company for giving me the opportunity to be part of the team for this summer and especially to my colleagues at the plant, who shared their knowledge, helped and guided me throughout this experience. Seeing the steel industry from 
such a close up, gave me a complete perspective of the metallurgical engineer development in a steel plant, this internship provided me an opportunity to think as an engineer and not as a student, and apply my technical knowledge to solve real problems and be part of the continuous improvement process at the plant.