Böhler Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG has a cogging and blooming mill to produce a lot of different block formats. Important parts in the rolling mill are the cogging stand with its multi groove rolls and the linear unit needed for the manipulator. The manipulator is responsible for shifting the blocks in the desired groove, to edge and to manipulate the blocks. During many years the requirements on the linear unit increased. The reasons therefore are the trend to bigger block and new special steels with higher resistance to forming. Due to the higher demands some production losses occurred, by failures of the manipulator and unscheduled shutdowns of the plant. The shutdowns were mostly caused by braked shafts of the linear unit. This study focuses on evaluation of drive concepts for the linear unit of the cogging stand. The analysis of the functioning of the linear unit, needed for the modernisation, showed that the coupled drive is the principal weakness of the existing linear unit. Due to the coupled drive of one spacer side by only one power train it comes to extreme high reaction forces at the single side manipulation. During the research of alternative drive concepts, we pay attention to avoid such functional weaknesses. Two of these alternative concepts, a hydraulic and a mechanic concept, were subjected to a feasibility study. The following technical and economical evaluation shows the strengths and the weaknesses of the selected concepts. Results demonstrate that the mechanical concept has the most technical and economical advantages. A multi body simulation was carried out to characterize the vibration behaviour of the new mechanical concept compared to the existing linear unit. The forces obtained by the simulation resulted in the following life time calculation that the new drive expects a 4,5- times longer life time than the existing facility.