Advocating engineered castings from a unique perspective: leading his firm's shift in focus, Ashland's Mike Swartzlander works to convert design engineers and buyers to casting lovers one component at a time.

Metalcasters know that their future long-term success depends upon the marketing, development and sales of engineered cast components. The days of end-users placing million dollar orders with U.S. metalcasters for "commodity" components that end up having as much machining value as casting value are over. Metalcasters must bring their value to the design table and provide their customers with value solutions for their end-products.

The following quote captures this thought: "To sit and wait for a casting order to show up is not the way to go. Metalcasters must be more engaged with their customers. Castings are be coming commodities--a piece that goes into something else. We must understand the value that piece brings and what can be done to improve that value even further."

While this quote easily could be attributed to any number of leading metalcasters, it was spoken by the leader of one of the world's largest metalcasting industry suppliers--Mike Swartzlander, vice president, Ashland Specialty Chemical, and general manager, Ashland Casting Solutions.

An industry supplier as an advocate of casting use? While this initiative has been accomplished successfully by various suppliers, including Applied Process Inc., and Magma Foundry Technologies Inc., one could argue that these finns have products and/or services (heat treating and casting process modeling software) that the casting end-user audience consumes. Aren't sand resins and binders too far removed from the end user that marketing to them is a waste of time and effort?

The answer is yes and no ... according to Swartzlander.

"Our customers (metalcasters) aren't in business to own foundries," said Swartzlander. "They are in business to design and make castings. If we can help grow their business, then we also will benefit in the long run."

A Conversion in Mind & Name

Swartzlander joined Ashland Specialty Chemical in 1989 as manager of business development and moved into the Foundry Products Division in 1990 as director of marketing and technical services. He joined Ashland after stints with Union Carbide Corp. and A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co. Swartzlander left the Foundry Products Division in 1996, serving in Ashland's Composite Polymers and Electronic Chemicals business groups, as well as heading up the company's business development group. He returned to lead Ashland's foundry consumables business in July 2001. This background in other industries as well as business development practices provided him an "outside the mold" perspective for the dramatic shift in focus his group was about to take.

In 2002, Ashland Inc., a Fortune 500 company and the parent of Ashland Specials, Chemical, had a new chair man that established significant growth goals for profit margin and revenue--for every business. While growing leaner is one step in this process (along with better coordination among all the various Ashland businesses), the shrinking size of the U.S. metalcasting industry and Ashland Casting Solutions' potential customer base (from 3,100 plants in 1992 to 2.420 today) makes revenue generation for single-product-focused suppliers difficult.

While Ashland always has been a developer of new products in its market (new resins and binders for various different mold and coremaking systems or refractory coatings), the focus mainly has been on sand casting, But, as one of only a small number of global suppliers serving this mature market segment in the industry, little room exists for growth. For Ashland to grow revenue, it was going to have to look outside of its comfort zone. But to what?

"Historically, we migrated to what we know, under the belief that if we work harder on what we know, things will work out in the end," said Swartzlander. But, he continued, this isn't the road to new opportunities and the growth Ashland required. It was critical to take some time and resources and find out where its future needed to be.

With Swartzlander at the helm, the business began a strategic analysis of itself, its customers and its competition to determine its core focus and where opportunities for growth exist.

During the early stages of its analysis, Ashland saw itself harkening back to when the coldbox process for core and mold making was introduced. With coldbox, new equipment, technology, processes and casting design was required. As a result, Ashland had to work with design engineers to teach casting design for coldbox, but also to drive design engineers to design for coldbox, ultimately driving metalcasters to use the coldbox process in their plants.

"Every supplier should understand their customers' customers," said Swartzlander. "They should understand the extraordinary pressures their customers face and the demands for low costs. In addition, every supplier must understand what value they can bring to metal castings."

Ashland saw the success of forward integration with coldbox, driving the casting design, as opposed to back ward integration, driving casting production. It was time to reintroduce forward integration into its business. This became the basis for Ashland Foundry Products Div.'s re-emergence from strategic planning as Ashland Casting Solutions. With the new name, the focus is still on its primary products, but its marketing and technical skills also have mined to OEM design engineers and purchasers and how to help steer them toward castings.

Initially, we have reached out to design engineers by staying close to our roots," said Swartzlander. In the first two years since the refocusing, Ashland is helping in the casting design stages with complex core packages while also aiding in the evaluation of where the production work can be sourced. Through its network of customers, Ashland can answer the question: "Who has the capability of producing these core packages and ultimately the cast components that are manufactured?" By staying close to its roots and knowledge base, Ashland has been able to immerse itself in this "new" market, while also re acquainting itself with this different customer base.

According to Swartzlander, today's design engineers "aren't knowledgeable about the cast metal process or materials" and many of today's metalcasters don't have the capability" or know-how to venture into the design realm. By stepping into this gap between design engineers and metalcasters, Swartzlander believes Ashland will be "stopping the disintegration of the value chain." He continued," We have big plans, but also realize we are creating new" market space," he said.

Expanding Market Space

While the official conversion to Casting Solutions was done in 2002, over the last two years the business has augmented its core services to begin to truly fulfill its capabilities as a service supplier to the OEM design engineer audience. within the last year, Swartzlander has led Ashland through three alliances with providers of casting process modeling software, coremaking process modeling software and rapid prototyping--all services demanded by many of today's casting consumers but not embraced by all metalcasters. These new services place Ashland further into that value chain between the OEMs and metalcasters.

"When we first performed the strategic planning, we analyzed the thought process of OEMs like General Motors and Caterpillar," said Swartzlander. Today, more and more, these companies have become "virtual OEMs" that don't manufacture any components, especially castings, said Swartzlander, and they need help.

According to Swartzlander, only 4% of all metal components made in the world are made as castings. Every new percent gained means hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the metal casting value chain and an immense opportunity for growth. That is Ashland's goal--help to increase that percentage to castings.

Swartzlander knows Ashland Casting Solutions is still in the early stages of its transformation of name, mind and body. Employees still work daily to immerse themselves in their new reality and understand their new customers' mindset. The business still constantly reviews and adjusts its strategic plan. But, he has set a goal for the business.

By 2008, he wants his customer base--both metalcasters and design engineers--to see Ashland as a metalcasting solutions company.

Whether or not tiffs goal is reached, metalcasters have a new ally in their fight to engineer new casting solutions for their customers.

"Metalcasting is still the most elegant way to create a metal component," said Swartzlander. "This is the message to deliver."

Mike Swartzlander Vice President Ashland Specialty Chemical, Dublin, Ohio General Manager Ashland Casting Solutions Dublin. Ohio

Education: Carnegie-Mellon Univ.-B.S. in Chemical Engineering; Univ. of Delaware-M.S. in Chemical Engineering

Family: Wife-Beverly, Daughters-Emily and Gretchen.

Company Information

Founded: 1967 as Ashland Foundry Products Division; restructured in 2002 as Ashland Casting Solutions.

Primary/Markets: Sand casting consumables, including. sand binders, refractory coatings, engineered sand additives and sleeves: casting process modeling; coremaking process modeling; and rapid prototyping.