“When we acquired Wabash, one of
our goals was to improve the mold line change time,” Harvey said. “While we were producing 200 molds/hour, the challenge was to see how nimble we could be to go from part to part. Te market volumes have gone smaller, so there is a need for quicker tool changes. Te team at Wabash has worked to improve this.” Te result is that the mold line now
produces 240 molds/hour with a cycle time shortened to 15 seconds. Te lower volumes at Wabash were
a driving point for adding permanent mold casting to the facility. Te tooling cost for the green sand line always has been too high to justify on lower volume components. According to Ballinger, the permanent mold operation will open the plant’s doors to new work because of the flexibility it provides. Wabash also has invested $100,000
in its cleaning room and is using existing robots to build a flexible cell for casting gate removal. Te new cell serves 12 different part numbers, with a 20-second tooling change time between parts. For an upper and lower intake manifold component with a volume of 220,000/year, the required number of workers for casting cleaning went from 20 to 12 with the new flexible cell. “Te feeling of the plant from the
days of Ray Witt remains,” Betzner said.
Acquisition Assimilation In the Harvey Industries model,
customer interaction occurs at the plant level as every facility is self- sustaining and entirely responsible for its own operations. “If there are quality issues, the
customer will contact the plant directly, rather than reach out to corporate,” Ballinger said. Harvey Industries wants to avoid
becoming a top-heavy organization, a problem that plagued several metalcast- ing groups of the last 20 years. “We are trying to stay with the fun- damentals,” Harvey said. “As the corpo- rate parent, we could grow our overhead too much, strain the business and not contribute to the bottom line. We need to keep our overhead lean, mean and trim and keep the bottom line strong.” Te firm relies on each of its plants to remain individually solvent.
September 2011 MODERN CASTING | 27
The Wabash facility always has been known for its ability to cast intake manifolds and cylinder heads (above). In addition, Wabash has a strong foothold in value-added services (below), with more than 45,000 sq. ft. of the plant dedicated to machining and assembly operations.
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