casting design. Te class is intentionally kept low on promotion, taught from an industry perspective and offered free of charge to OFC customers. Te industry standards as published by the Investment Casting Institute make the foundation of the class and are augmented by the lessons learned from years of working to resolve common casting design anomalies. Te IC-101 class content continues to evolve based on feedback received from OFC’s customer students. In the beginning, OFC was uncer- tain as to the potential demand for its IC-101 class. It began by proposing the class to selected customers and was somewhat disappointed by what appeared to be tepid interest. Not dissuaded, OFC more aggressively marketed the class and advertised the new offering by an email blast. OFC found it difficult to directly
connect with the engineers who would benefit most from the training because they were often insulated from their supply chain. Te challenge then became how to best make engineers aware of this opportunity for training. Often times that introduction was facilitated by our customer’s quality engineering or commodity manage- ment. Interest in the class grew and demand has grown to the point that it is now teaching IC-101 on a monthly basis, often conducting two or three sessions per visit. It became clear that IC-101 was
addressing a substantial customer need for information. Following a class of 40 engineers, one manager first con- gratulated and then challenged OFC with a question: “What more can you do to help us be better?” In 2014, OFC began to offer its
customers a free IC-201 class. IC-201 is a three-day class held at OFC that teaches the basics of investment casting manufacturing. Both investment cast- ing classes stress the benefits of early collaborative involvement. Engineers can be more receptive to design sug- gestions when discussed at the “napkin” stages and before the ink dries. How- ever, a frequently heard comment from IC-101 students is that engineers are under pressure to deliver and generally aren’t afforded the necessary time to
November 2015 MODERN CASTING | 39
linger over a design. After repeatedly hearing that statement, OFC realized if it truly wanted to participate in concur- rent engineering activity, it needed to provide customer engineers with timely access to its resources. OFC chose to refocus its business
development activities as collaborative engineering interaction rather than
strictly a sales effort. Te company hired engineers to act as its internal points of contact so they could not only respond quickly to technical questions but also be proactive. As an example, on receipt of a request for quotation, engi- neers reach out to customers with an offer of assistance to make the design more robust. Given the communication
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