Aarrowcast’s Sophisticated Strategy


An ambitious predictive maintenance plan started four years ago is paying off in reduced maintenance costs and improved uptime at Aarrowcast, while an expanding alloy line is attracting new customers and new work. SHANNON WETZEL, MANAGING EDITOR


A


l Gambsky, predictive maintenance supervisor at Aarrowcast, Shawano, Wis., is at the white


board, writing out the seventh bullet point describing the company’s predic- tive maintenance plan. It’s an abbrevi- ated version of the 52-page document he compiled earlier this year—pages of stats, charts and instrument readings


that was submitted for the AFS Plant Engineering award, which Aarrowcast won. Gambsky is clearly passionate about the work, and after three years of steadily increasing the machinery points measured and logged, Aarrow- cast sees a direct correlation among predictive maintenance, decreased downtime and increased molds made per hour.


As typical in many manufacturing


facilities, Aarrowcast’s maintenance plan involved repairing or replac- ing machinery and equipment parts on a scheduled basis. Within this plan, sometimes parts broke before scheduled maintenance; other times it seemed parts were being replaced when they still had life left in them. Gambsky had the radical idea to use


Aarrowcast specializes in large cored iron castings and produces most of its cores in-house. 20 | MODERN CASTING July 2015


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