Profile


Being Small and Thinking Big Brings Success for Shellcast


Shellcast’s founder Ger- ald Krause set out on a mis- sion 52 years ago to supply the marketplace with small to medium sized air-melt steel investment castings. He held a


mechanical engineering


degree and he found that the West Michigan area offered opportunities for a young graduate interested in foundry operations.


He joined Howmet Cor- poration, then Misco, as a product engineer. He quickly learned the process of invest- ment casting and began de- veloping his plans to start out on his own and on April 1st of 1961 he began Shellcast. To- day the company employs 22 people and is in the $2.0~$3.0 million annual sales range.


18 Current owner Bob John-


son joined the company in 2006 and brought with him more than 25 years of invest- ment casting experience from companies such as Golden State


and Teledyne Cast Products. While with


organiza-


Castings, Howmet, these


tions he gained broad experi- ence in quality, engineering and technical sales mostly in high stressed aerospace appli- cations. He also co-developed a permanent mold process for titanium and nickel alloys and earned two patents. After Krause’s death in late 2010 Johnson assumed the role of company president and exe- cuted a purchase in mid 2011. After achieving ISO 9001: 2008 AS-9100C qual-


ity systems registration, the company began shifting to a significantly more demand- ing


aerospace the and


focus and found success in leveraging


of a smaller operation military


combination that


had technical capabilities nor- mally associated with larger investment casters. Castings with high NDT standards be- came the norm and with that, the need for process consis- tency elevated. “The technical staff be- gan a systematic review of the process and employed statisti- cal tools to isolate variables and cost drivers,” Johnson said. “Through a company- wide campaign of continuous improvement, we realized im-


ABOVE: This component illustrates Shellcast’s shift to a significantly more de- manding aerospace and military focus.


LEFT: Pouring is often videotaped to allow a pro- cedural review afterwards to identify opportunities for improvements.


mediate gains. Importantly,


no changes are implemented without


following a strict


evaluation process to assure that product integrity is main- tained.”


“Out-of-the-box thinking is encouraged,” Johnson said, noting controlled cooling us- ing racking and dedicated fix- tures has allowed dramatically increased


yields. The term


“directional solidification” is used within the operation to drive home the concept of the casting cooling towards the gating. Pouring is often vid- eotaped to allow a procedural review afterwards to identify opportunities


for improve-


ments. As a sub-set of cross training, workers from other departments are often on hand


August 2013


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