“We have become confident we can make just about anything people want in aluminum.”—Brian Shaughnessy
the floor to lift up castings.” In its permanent mold facility,
AC Foundry has achieved a 40% cycle time improvement in the core and finishing departments and a 60% reduction in material handling (touches). In the sand casting facil- ity, cycle time in the core room has been improved by roughly 35%. The team currently is finalizing improvements to the sand casting finishing department. “We’ve been able to identify what the issues are in the sand foundry finishing room based on the past projects, Meekhof said. “In four days we were able to tear apart and reorganize the department to address
major contributors to ergonomics and process flow problems with no lost production time.” AC Foundry estimates a 20%
improvement in cycle time by reor- ganizing where machines and stor- age are located. The project required no capital investment. According to Meehkof, in 2011 the metalcasting company realized nearly $210,000 in savings with less than $13,000 in capital required. “Tree quarters of our projects
have a payback period of less than two months,” she said.
Holding the Course With the Volvo pipe running
smoothly, AC Foundry will need to prove to itself and potential customers it can apply the principles learned on one project to new ones, according to Tom Prucha, American Foundry Soci- ety vice president of technical services, who advised AC Foundry in the early stages of the Volvo pipe casting. “It’s important for metalcasters that want to make the leap into more complex castings to emphasize com- munication among its staff,” Prucha said. “When a challenging part has been successfully finished, they can’t go back to just throwing their drawings over the wall to let the other guy work in a vacuum on the next step.” Te communication philosophy appears to be one the group at AC Foundry has taken to heart. During an interview in late 2011, nearly every member of the engineering and pro- duction management team gathered in an office to talk about their evolution, share process stats and discuss their hopes for the future. “We work like this,” Shaughnessy
said. “It’s a complete group effort. Tere’s a lot of brainstorming, a lot of supporting. We’re working together to develop processes and programs.” In 2008, AC Foundry’s annual
sales figure was $3.2 million. Annual sales in 2011 hit $8.8 million. Te 59-employee metalcasting facility has launched 70 new parts in the last three years. Te team has built on its first success with Volvo to develop four additional unique water jacketed components for the manufacturer’s new engine platform. “We have become confident we
can make just about anything people want in aluminum,” Shaughnessy said. “We’ve developed an engineering group that is able to work closely with our customer to determine the best practice to produce a quality casting. Tat’s the big difference. It isn’t a guess anymore. We’re applying science.”
ONLINE RESOURCE
For an audiocast from the team at AC Foundry, visit
www.moderncasting.com. .
44 | MODERN CASTING March 2012
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