Other castings utilized in BAF products include a hangar bracket for the company’s residential Haiku fan line (left) and a housing for a control key pad.
and investment casting,” Oleson said. “So we prototyped with investment casting and when we were happy there, we tooled up as a short run die casting—all before making a hard production tool. By the time we did the hard tooling, we knew a lot about the product. I don’t know if we would
have done it that way if the opportu- nity was not there.” Production Castings and BAF
first connected at a trade show where O’Brien and Production Castings sales engineer Mark Preuss talked in great length about how the two companies might be a good fit
for each other. About a year later, the fan manufacturer presented an opportunity to the casting supplier to produce a component on a tight deadline. “Sean needed us to produce a die
cast mold and provide first article samples that included secondary machining and powder coating in eight weeks or less,” Preuss said. “We accepted the challenge and they sent a supplier quality manager to visit us. Working closely with him and Sean, we were able to meet the challenge and the rest is history.” At BAF, every supplier is assigned
a quality engineer who examines each source for cost, quality and delivery. Before becoming a supplier, a com- pany is visited by a quality engineer who will look at the infrastructure, evaluate quotes and review on-time delivery statistics. “We have an ongoing process of finding new suppliers,” O’Brien said. “It starts upfront with the visit and going back and forth with quoting. We expect them to be upfront with us, and we are upfront with them in regard to volumes and forecast.” O’Brien said he wants to know
from the supplier what happens to the purchase order when it shows up in their inbox. He wants to know what the process is with the order after the account manager receives it, and what the checks and balances are for how it will be produced. “We ask for accurate lead times on our quotes so we can plan our
22 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | Jan/Feb 2016
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