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Growing the Casting Pie |
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The
foundry industry faces challenges like never before -- a slow economy,
buyer’s pushing on costs and terms, offshore foundries low-balling,
growing environmental issues, soaring health care costs just to name the
top few concerns. Three years now and unfortunately the list is not
getting any shorter. However,
every challenge offers an opportunity! These
are huge challenges, bigger than the last time. Yes, the last time we
faced anything like this was about 22 years ago – the last major
recession of the early 1980’s. At that time, we saw foundries and
manufacturing plants close down and jobs go to the South of the Border!
A famous little politician later called that the “Great
Big Sucking Sound”, referring to the auto and other manufacturing
jobs being sucked down to where the cheaper labor was.
When the economy picked up steam, the trend slowed. As the
Mexican capacity was tapped, their costs went up, to a point now where it
does not offer any advantage taking production there – the cost
differential is too small or non-existent for the additional risk and
complications. As
a result of what happened in the early 1980’s, we saw the foundry
industry go through consolidation throughout the 80’s, with the
stronger, innovative foundries growing at the expense of the smaller,
inefficient ones. As
the casting demand grew, those innovative foundries benefited
significantly for many years to come. What is different this
time is that the US share of the pie has shrunk significantly and the
demand has been slow to pick up versus previous post-recession periods.
There
are a number of things that the foundry industry can do to face these
challenges and win!
One of those things is to grow the US Pie!
Well, you say, how can foundries have any control on demand for
castings? As it turns out, foundries have more control over the demand
of castings than the importing of castings, in my humble opinion.
If we look at all of the fabrications and forgings that are
produced in the US and worldwide and if we look at applications that are
currently eliminated as a casting due to process, alloy, heat-treatment,
machining requirements. And, then begin to apply
some innovative technologies to convert these opportunities into
castings, I believe, we can GROW THE PIE!
Creating a Center of Excellence in Casting Design (funded by
State, Federal and Industry members) to help the foundry industry is one
way to accomplish this task. buyCASTINGS has been advocating
“…foundries need to move up the value chain” since late 2000 and
helping buyers and foundries work with suppliers of casting development
technologies such as CAD, RP, RT technologies from day one. See
buyCASTINGS’ casting conversion examples given below. By the way, this approach will not only help US foundries survive and grow, but also allow us to maintain a technological edge over the offshore competition. Since these new casting jobs are going to allow us to help our customers cut costs and add technical value, they are more likely to stay in this country longer. Since
April 2003, buyCASTINGS has assisted numerous manufacturers in transitioning from other manufacturing methods such as
machining and metal injection molding to castings which has
resulted in cost, time and reliability advantages for these buyers. Following are some of the
requests: buyCASTINGS’ Casting Conversion Requests
Sponsors |
Growing the Casting Pie | A
Giant Sleeps |
What our Customers are saying! |
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