Professor of indus- trial and manufac- turing engineering at Western Michigan Univ., Kalamazoo, Mich. Ramrattan, who has communicated with AC Foundry for more than 20 years, brought up his concerns about taking on the advanced project. “I wondered what was their capability for produc- ing highly cored castings and if they were embarking on growth just for growth,” Ramrattan said. Still, AC Foundry pushed forward,
And that was for months,” Shaugh- nessy said. “Ten we went through the recession and cut back a lot.” AC Foundry survived the period
casting its old standby parts with the support of parent company Melling Tool Co., Jackson, Mich., all the while obsessing over complicated marine
“Our breakthrough was figuring out how to control when and how core gas was going to escape.”—Brian Shaughnessy
engine parts. Brainstorming ensued. Various tooling choices were made, scrapped and re-made. A skeleton crew of 23 pushed for a breakthrough, which came that Friday night in the spring of 2008. “Our breakthrough was figuring
determined not to remain vulnerable to competition with low-cost imports. “Initially, we were getting 95% scrap.
out how to control when and how core gas was going to escape,” Shaughnessy said. “Te process we’ve developed since then focuses on what creates the gas, what are the determining factors causing the gas and when they are going to fire.” Scrap was reduced to 50%, then
13.5%. Now the metalcasting facility needed to bring consistency to its process. “Once we got it running, we knew we just had to fine-tune it from there,”
said Greg Habenicht, tool- ing manager.
Battle for Control
In 2009, Melling’s Industrial Group
general manager and president directed AC Foundry through performance planning, strengths, weaknesses, oppor- tunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, and strategic analysis. “We did a complete business evalua-
tion externally and internally,” Shaugh- nessy said. “Ten we immediately addressed what we needed to change.” One of the main areas of focus was
process control. AC Foundry began tracking process factors beyond those needed for its simple products to deter- mine the optimum settings needed to produce complex components. “We track the temperature of the first and last core on every rack layer, mold temperature, mold height, environmental conditions and sand
40 | MODERN CASTING March 2012
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