location, tooling, freight and price. Buy American provisions often govern these sales, and quality can have bearing in some cases. Municipal specifications also can be a temporary roadblock to working with new city governments. “A specification can be written that
is the numerical equivalent of what is on the books for a municipality,” Barrett said. “There are a lot of sets of equivalent tooling.” When it comes to satisfying existing customers in the municipal market, Barrett said it’s more about lead times and on-time delivery rates—Neenah’s is 90% or above—than with industrial castings. The new automatic mold- ing line is ideal for the rapid pattern changeovers and flexibility necessary to meet those requirements. But Neenah also contends it is ca-
pable of adding value in the municipal market, often dominated by the percep- tion that the castings are commodities. The company maintains an extensive in-house pattern shop, and while many may think innovation in municipal cast- ings is limited to deciding what shape the manhole cover should be, Neenah counts innovation through research and
Employees can change patterns on the new molding line as quickly as the machine cycles.
development as one of the things that will sustain it going forward. Neenah’s innovation in the munici-
pal market and the quality systems that help the company stay competi- tive are transferrable skills to the com- mercial castings side of the business, according to Barrett. “The product line is broad and getting broader,” he said. One of the reasons for this growth is the $54 million Neenah spent on its
new automatic molding line, which the executives at the recent round- table said is meeting their expecta- tions, though they are still charting their way through the basic learning curve and ironing out some issues with Neenah’s sand system. “If everyone knew in 2006 that
the downturn was coming, we might not have [made the investment],” Caruso said. “But long-term, it was the right decision.”
MC
MODERN CASTING / December 2010
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