company is open to the ideas of its young staff.”
Under the direction of one of AC
Foundry’s most recent hires, Mack- enzie Meekhof, business development manager and industrial engineer, the metalcasting company has undergone process flow projects in the core room and finishing areas to improve worker comfort/fatigue and reduce cycle times using data driven industrial engineer- ing principles not previously applied at the facility. “We examined how everything ran
One of the main challenges AC Foundry faced in producing complex aluminum components was the presence of gas due to extensive coring.
“We used an infrared temperature gun to better establish the proper tem- perature range,” Davis said. “We were able to lower our scrap on that part from 33% to 10% by September 2011.” Te team learned that the infrared
scanners eventually would become dirty and report inaccurate tempera- tures. So they established a procedure to verify the infrared gun holds the standard, rather than purchasing a new gun every two months. “Part by part, we record what the
temperature and gun offset tempera- ture is,” Davis said. “We can look at the data and see whether our process looks good. Ten we can fine-tune the process even further.” In the effort to produce more com-
plex castings via better process control, AC Foundry became more efficient. Its permanent mold facility now pro- duces in one shift more than what it used to make in two shifts. “I really enjoy designing everything to be manufacturable,” Sovia said. “From the cores to the tooling to how the core assembly is going to fit on the rack, to the glue fixtures you assemble the cores with—all the pieces of the puzzle.” Sovia started with AC Foundry in 2007 as an engineering intern. He is one of three full-time engineers at the company that are recent graduates of Western Michigan Univ. Te young engineers have provided the metalcast- ing facility withknowledge of fill and solidification simulation technology, computer aided design and manufac- turing, ergonomics, process flow and lean principles.
March 2012 MODERN CASTING | 43
“One day, Aaron Skrocki, strategic planning director from Melling Indus- trial Group’s headquarters, visited me with my former students,” Ramrattan said. “During our chat, he encouraged them to be open about practices in the foundry and ways they could help improve the process over time. Te
through the system initially and came up with a couple of layouts and adap- tations to minimize operator’s lifting requirements, as well as distance traveled,” Meekhof said. “We used that to determine an improved layout, which included simple things like moving core racks closer to machines, implementing some minor lift assist equipment and raising up baskets so the operator is no longer bending to
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