At this time of year, everyone is talking about making and keeping New Year’s resolutions. Losing weight, getting more active, and spending more time with the family are all great examples. Related to your job as a casting buyer, a good resolution would be to limit the amount of stress in your job. Launching a new part with your foundry shouldn’t be a stressful process. To help you reduce your level of stress, I have listed eight easy rules you should consider to help you achieve a successful casting launch.

1. Always start early. Choose the foundry you will be working with very early in the casting design phase. Early involvement with the foundry engineering team will ensure your casting design will fit the manufacturing process that will be developed for your casting. This will also allow you to use the experience of the foundry to avoid and eliminate any potential processing issues or defects.

2.  Review your design on a regular basis. Always solicit casting design ideas from the casting engineering team––remember, they are the experts here. I’ve seen instances over the years where foundries may be hesitant to suggest changes for fear of insulting their customer. Make sure the team understands that you are open to all improvement ideas. When reviewing your design, make sure that every production department handling your casting has a chance to suggest improvements. 

3. Communicate your requirements clearly. This should be fairly obvious, but you would be amazed at the number of times when I’ve seen a process fall apart because of an unclear requirement. 

Don’t assume that everyone understands the details––they should be clearly listed and itemized. Make sure everyone understands the specs involved, such as material type and physical characteristics, surface finish, painting or finishing needs, and internal soundness requirements. All inspection requirements should also be outlined. Some of the requirements that often get overlooked are the packaging, preservation, and shipment details, so make sure these are communicated upfront.

4. Always perform a simulation. Running a simulation of the pouring and filling of the mold, along with the solidification of the casting is the best way to eliminate potential problems before you even start cutting the pattern. Taking the time at this stage will help the foundry produce conforming and high-quality castings from the start. While I’ve seen instances where the foundry thought the casting was simple enough to bypass the simulation, your best practice would be to make sure a simulation is completed for all your castings.

5. Build good tooling. Looking back to my days as an apprentice patternmaker, my mentor always said, “The most expensive tool you can buy ends up being the cheapest tool.” He was correct, but I have a caveat: the more expensive tool will most likely require less rework and maintenance, but the tool cost should be in line and balanced with your annual part demand and requirements. The point here is that the tool you buy should be robust and completely capable of producing castings to your specifications with a minimum amount of maintenance. Discussing tooling cost and usability should be a key topic of conversation with the foundry’s casting engineering team.

6. Don’t shortcut the sampling process. Everyone knows that production timelines often need to be expedited, but make sure you allow enough time for the samples to be processed correctly. There is very often the urge to walk the sample castings through the process. While this often speeds things up and reduces the possibility that the samples will get lost or delayed, it doesn’t allow the process to run normally. Keep in mind that you are trying to prove out the capability of the production process and make sure there are no gaps or issues that could create problems in the future. Always allow the manufacturing process to run as it is designed.

7. Perform your validation. Much the same as with the foundry’s sampling process, make sure you run the sample castings completely through your internal manufacturing process. Don’t shortcut your own processes; look at how the parts progress from receipt of the sample castings through the production and consumption of the finished parts. 

8. Follow-up on milestones. Communicate on a regular schedule with the foundry to ensure that all of your project stakeholders are kept informed of the progress. Keeping abreast of your launch can sometimes be time consuming, but it is a necessary dimension for developing a stress-free casting launch.