Lyle Jenkins (DIS Technical Director) asked me, in November of 1999, to give this presentation.  I have always had the deepest respect for Lyle and his dedication to the foundry industry.  I was deeply honored when he asked me to speak.  Lyle believed that I could help him deliver a message on a subject with which he is deeply concerned - quality in the United States foundry industry.  I started immediately to put together the presentation which I was scheduled to give at the DIS meeting in Wichita, Kansas in June of 2000.  God saw fit to alter my life with events in November of 1999 and April of 2000 which changed my decision to be present in June.  Those events caused a very positive change in my life.  I had thoroughly my career up to then.  However, I made the decision to change careers to be able to work for a foundry which I felt has tremendous future potential, that foundry being Aarowcast.  In giving this talk I am not going to use a lot of statistics or technical terms.  I am going to approach it from the people and management involvement and the effects that I feel it has had on overall industry casting quality.
     The information presented is based on my 34 years of experience working with worldwide casting suppliers.  I have had the opportunity to evaluate over 500 casting suppliers in 21 countries.  This was accomplished during my career at Caterpillar in the following areas:  1966-1976 in the Mapleton Foundry; 1976-1997 in Central Purchasing; 1997-2000 at Engine Division Technical Purchasing.  I am now the Technical Support Manager at Aarowcast, Inc.
     Caterpillar, as you know, has been one of the largest users of castings for many years.  Caterpillar's own foundry organization in the mid 1970's, consisted of two large gray iron casting facilities employing 4,200 and supplying 80% of its gray iron casting needs.  The balance of the gray iron and 100% of its ductile iron, malleable iron and steel castings were purchased from the United States foundry industry.  There were years in which the total casting dollar volume used by Cat approached one billion dollars.  In the mid 1970's Caterpillar's casting needs were so great that the company centralized all rough casting purchasing to maintain capacity, take advantage of dollar volumes purchased and attempt to stabilize the tremendous number of people and dollar assets required to control this tremendous package.  The casting supplier family at that time contained over 100 members.  It was not uncommon for casting reject rates to be in the 5-6% range and casting salvage was a way of life.  Other U.S. companies were sharing the same experiences.
     The late 1970's and early 1980's experienced a decrease in the demand for castings.  Expediting teams disappeared along with foundry casting order backlogs.  The emphasis on castings changed from "Quantity" and "Delivery" to "Quality" and "Cost".  It was during the early 1980's that many U.S. companies took a long hard look at quality and cost improvements.  This was after the 1970's when casting demand was so high that sub-par quality was acceptable.  Companies were even willing to conduct sample casting evaluations for the suppliers to expedite the delivery.  We basically "lulled our casting suppliers to sleep" in the quality area.  By 1980 U.S. foundries had become below par in quality and technology in comparison to the foreign competition.
     Increased emphasis by U.S. companies, on improving quality and reducing costs, forced the foundries to improve.  As companies began transferring responsibility for quality back to the casting source, a strong bond began to form between casting users and suppliers.  The program to accomplish this was called "casting supplier certification."
     During the late 1980's and early 1990's, U.S. foundries improved tremendously and surpassed foreign competition in quality and cost.  To do this "customer-supplier communication" was established.  Using this communication, casting buyers began transferring the responsibility for quality over to the casting suppliers.  Casting buying companies began to train casting suppliers in the areas of material specifications, engineering drawings, dimensional layouts, metallurgical testing and casting soundness testing.  The casting supplier was asked to detail to the customer, exactly how he produced the ordered castings along with the methods used to control product quality.  Quality plans with significant control point charts were required and agreement to these quality plans was arrived at during foundry certification audits.  Casting buying groups used this information to build supplier profiles containing useful information for future purchasing.
     In 1992 the Caterpillar General Office interviewed top management of its top 10 dollar volume casting suppliers.  The question asked of them was "Why are casting rejections at an all time low of less than 1.0% in dollars?."  The answer was always "Because of the much improved communications established by your supplier certification program."
     U.S. casting supplier quality and cost improvement was so recognized that Caterpillar decided to outsource 1100 part numbers and close one of its two foundries at Mapleton, keeping only 57 part numbers (blocks, heads, liners) in the foundry which remained open.  Other casting buying companies paralleled Cat with similar action.  The burden on the foundries of surviving multiple audits by multiple companies was lessened considerably by the development of the QS 9000 program, a welcome and very efficient program.
     In the mid to late 1990's the casting user/casting supplier "bond" began to break down.  Overall quality levels began to deteriorate as "communications" began to break down.  The division of the company into business units reduced internal communications and technology transfer capabilities.  This was furthered by the breaking up of a large manufacturing plant into "focus facilities" which thinned the ranks of available technical personnel.  Incentive bonus plans brought on price buying and the lowering of acceptable quality levels.  Foreign sourcing complicated the issue with language and customs problems, complicated by the establishment of casting pipelines to assure delivery.  Because QS 9000 became a reality, technical staffs were reduced and a dependency on third party auditing was accepted.  As the number of auditing groups increased, the casting expertise level decreased and "paid for" audits began to give foundries better ratings than they deserved.
     As time proceeds, companies are starting to reconnect their internal communications.  The level of casting expertise within buying companies continues to decline.  Foreign sourcing has begun to decline as casting buyers learn that they have to depend on their domestic casting suppliers for technical expertise.  Casting producers would be well advised to begin reestablishing strong communication bonds with customers.  A good place to start would be to include major customer personnel in the auditing procedures now conducted by "third party" organizations.

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