Traditional, one-man leadership has been replaced by something that works better at AFS Corporate Member PIAD Precision Casting Corp., a non-ferrous foundry 38 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Since its inception in 1967, top-down decision-making was in the hands of a single CEO, but since 2023, a new, people-first new approach is decidedly side-by-side, hands-on, and collaborative. 

Vice President of Manufacturing and COO George Latta and Vice President of Administration Audra Hier, who is also chief strategy officer and chief human resources officer, have hit their stride as leadership partners, and the results have been impressive.
What kind of outcomes are they seeing?

The leadership reorganization has been a catalyst for growth, including sales increase of 44% year over year as of August 31. 
“When this leadership team took over, not only were we tasked with the creating a smooth transition, we’ve also now been tasked with growing the company at rates that haven’t been achieved before,” said Latta. “We’ve almost doubled the output of pounds of copper.”

From an accounting perspective, PIAD eclipsed its own four-year sales record in August and is on track to go one-and-a-half times above its 2023 performance on the top line––the bottom line has already more than doubled year over year, according to Riggle in finance. 

“We are growing more than efficiently,” said Director of Finance Josh Riggle, “and we’re improving at both ends of the spectrum. We just completed a margin analysis, and where we are now is 10 times better than where we were last year. Then, if you look at the manufacturing side, our efficiency is tremendous compared to last year. We’re operating with close to the same amount of metalcasters and fewer working days, and we’re producing 40,000–50,000 lbs. more each month––we project at least 49% growth in metal cast in 2024 versus 2023.”

What would we see if we took a tour at PIAD?

Efficiency is paramount in the foundry where 22,000–26,000 parts are manufactured a week from among the 3,307 different sets of tooling housed inside the 37,500-sq.-ft. plant. Latta recalls their purchasing manager, a Navy veteran, once compared PIAD’s well-coordinated system of people and processes to the activity on an aircraft carrier.

The company is comprised of a 25,000-sq.ft. foundry that includes foundry, smelting, mold cleaning, maintenance, casting cleaning, quality control, and shipping; a 3,300-sq.-ft. tool room, and 9,200 sq. ft. dedicated to offices as well as employee lunch and locker rooms. PIAD’s machine shop, Latrobe Machine Corp. (LMC), 15 minutes away from the foundry, is a 27,400-sq.ft. facility. In addition to machining, the company offers the additional value-add services of reverse engineering, milling, drilling, cutting, tapping, annealing, heat treating, vibratory finishing, and plating.

ISO certified as of October 1 this year, this job shop runs at 68% capacity and operates according to lean manufacturing practices in the production of hand-poured, non-corrosive, permanent-mold copper, bronze, and brass castings for industries such as medical, power distribution, railroad, marine, pump/valve, mining/drilling, material handling, automotive, lock hardware, and munitions. Castings range between 0.13 lbs. and 40 lbs. “Smaller molds are disassembled manually after the casting cycle, quenched, and then reassembled for the next cycle,” Hier explained. “Our larger molds go through a similar process using our semi-automated casting machines.”

What is their process and its advantages?

PIAD’s proprietary and patented “chill casting” permanent mold process was invented by its founders.

“In permanent mold casting, the molten metal is poured into a mold,” explained Engineering Manager Richard Ray. “Because of the thermal conductivity of the mold material, the heat is quickly drawn out of the casting material and transferred into the mold. This allows the part to solidify more quickly, allowing less time between casting cycles and improving efficiency.
“Not only are our mold designs critical for this type of casting, but our casting alloys are equally critical. PIAD’S alloys are designed around the temperatures between a liquid and solid state. By minimizing the gap between these temperatures, it optimizes the amount of heat that has to be extracted from the casting and further encourages rapid solidification. PIAD has become one of the most successful permanent mold foundries because of the knowledge of our alloys and because of our years of experience with mold design.” 

Compared to sand casting, PIAD’s permanent mold process offers a better surface finish––approximating jewelry quality––and less gas in the molds, according to Ray. “You can give the customer a near net shape with virtually no machine stock, just because of the chill process,” he continued. 

Conductivity is also better facilitated with permanent mold casting, according to Latta. 

PIAD doesn’t try to compete on price against sand casting, but the pace and productivity they offer can’t be beat, said Ray.
“The tooling for sand casting is very cheap,” he said. “Let’s say you have a 30-cavity build box––they press the two sides of the box together, they fill up all 30 cavities with metal, and then they set it aside to cool for about four hours. But in that four hours, we might produce 200 castings in our perm mold process just because of how it pulls the BTUs out of the metal and the solidification. So, if it’s a high- volume part, they may have 10 build boxes. Whereas, we build one mold, and in a day we’ll still produce more parts because of the difference in the process.”

What’s next for PIAD?

Hier says she and her team are preparing for more growth and expansion in 2025 to keep up with the demands of their 301 customers, most of whom are calling for more castings from PIAD––in some cases, triple the current volumes in the next three to four years. 

“Our major customers are asking for 40%-50% additional volume year over year,” she said. “We are being proactive in our approach, since it takes approximately six months to train a new production employee and three months to train a new machinist/machine operator. We have been incrementally ramping up our manpower at PIAD and LMC on all shifts and will continue to do so until we are at 100% capacity. We have a lot of room to grow and expand as we continue to build our relationships with our customers.

“We will double in the next year for sure, because we’ve already grown 44% this year,” she added. “It’s pretty phenomenal and exciting all in the same breath.”