Online Resource
Visit
www.metalcastingdesign.com for additional pictures of the RIA facility.
are the maintenance men. To fulfi ll its function as OEM to the war fi ghter, RIA employs about 1,700, with more than 1,200 fl oor workers and 500 administra- tive support staff. Just as the metalcasting facility
makes up but one portion of the verti- cally integrated operation that is RIA, the company’s production of mobile repair centers is but one of its major military programs. Indeed, the lion’s share of its production (50%) goes to howitzer programs. The OEM devotes another 15% of its product mix to ar- mor programs (primarily for Humvees and other Army vehicles). After the 20% of operations that go into mobile repair center assembly, the company is left with a balance of about 15% that is spread through small arms and other replacement parts, including for certain original equipment the facility has pro- duced in the past, such as howitzers and armor systems.
The mobile repair units do not use
any metal castings, and neither do the armor programs (the plates currently in production are cut from fl at steel with a laser and sent out as kits). So, most of the metalcasting work goes toward the arsenal’s prolifi c howitzer builds. RIA currently is making around 500 howitzers at a rate of 10 per month on a contract that spans a fi ve-year period. The fi nal shipped product is broken into fi ve main subassemblies: the trail, cradle, saddle, breech and barrel, and fi ring platform. “We do the whole nine yards [on
the howitzers] here in house,” Besse said. “That’s one of the things we sell ourselves on. We even manage the other 2,300 parts, the outsourced stuff.” According to Besse and Fullerlove,
the small arms production portion of the facility is one that the current ad- ministration would like to see grow. A short time ago, the Defense Logistics
Agency was having diffi culty sourcing the parts, so RIA stepped in and started bidding on them. The arsenal recently purchased the required machines, acquired the expertise needed and set aside the appropriate fl oor space to make small arms parts production a signifi cant part of its business. “It’s going to be its own little focus factory,” Besse said. In addition to casting capabilities
and assembly lines, RIA has several drop hammer forges of various sizes and an extensive machine shop. The company has two seven-axis machines, of which there are only a handful in the world.
Metalcasting’s Marching Orders
RIA’s metalcasting facility pours whatever metal its customers re- quire—gray iron, ductile iron, com- pacted graphite iron, abrasion resis- tant iron, heat resistant iron, corrosion resistant iron, carbon steel, low alloy steel, heat resistant steel, corrosion resistant steel, 300 series aluminum, 500 series aluminum, brass, bronze, copper-nickel alloys, titanium (com-
RIA currently pours only howitzer parts in its sand casting facility, but it has produced parts for other programs in the past. 34 Metal casting Design anD purchasing March/april 2010
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