Intermet's Wagner plant redefines - and redesigns - traditional foundry role.

Challenging the unbelievers, Intermet's Wagner Castings has created much of its own future thanks to unparalleled product development and engineering.

Hearing Intermet-Wagner-foundry President Jim Mason and his staff talk excitedly about the firm's 80-year anniversary, its successful exit from malleable iron, its new foundry expansion and the acquisition by publicly-traded Intermet last year, plenty of interesting ideas emerged for chronicling the newest ductile iron subsidiary of the world's largest independent foundry company. But in an era when the industry preaches the cease of "pattern swapping" and the need to take its future into its own hands, an area considered ancillary to many independent foundries was what gained the marquee here.

With quality a "given" today, the plant (whose output places it in the top 10 U.S. foundries in engineered ductile iron shipments) long ago found its niche in service - mainly design expertise. "This plant became more than a ductile iron foundry years ago," Mason said. "It evolved into a company that provides solutions, which just also happened to be a quality ductile iron casting producer."

Years ago, the company decided that rather than existing as a price taker on iron castings, it was going to make a name for itself by excelling at what goes into a part before any tools are built or castings are poured. That path proved to be a good one as automakers have continued the trend of transferring design responsibilities, including prototyping and testing, to suppliers.

Looking Back

Last year, the plant celebrated its 80th anniversary. The company was founded in 1917 by Albert Wagner and four associates to produce gray iron ordnance vehicle castings for the Holt Manufacturing Co., which later became Caterpillar Tractor. Incidentally, a young Bill Grede served as secretary of the foundry in 1919 before returning to Milwaukee to start his own foundry company. In the firm's 80-year history, Mason is only the fourth president to guide the foundry.

Among the many highlights of the plant's storied timeline are: 1963 produced first high-volume as-cast ductile iron; early 1970s - became largest automotive jobbing foundry in the U.S.; and 1972 - produced first austempered ductile iron (ADI) component. The foundry also was instrumental in the overall emergence of ductile iron in the U.S. beginning in the 1970s. At the request of its customers, it was asked to train others in ductile iron production so enough quality sources would exist for the relatively new iron.

After 66 years in the Wagner family and four years with a group of eight owners, the firm was sold to Cleveland-based Sudbury Corp. in 1987, and to Intermet Corp., Troy, Michigan, in 1997. Of its adoption into the 11-foundry parent, Mason said: "Intermet provides the critical mass, financial stability and diverse capabilities that are all requirements of a truly global company. To be world class today, a foundry must be able to deliver anywhere in the world. But like the marines, there are only a few good suppliers that can follow an automaker all over the globe - that's one of Intermet's strengths."

When asked what the name "Intermet-Wagner" means in foundry and automotive circles, Mason replied "problem-solvers," "technical know-how," and "high-quality automotive ductile iron safety parts."

Long subscribing to the belief that a foundry can create its own markets, more than 50% of its total work today was designed within its own doors.

Stepping in a New Direction

In the early 1970s, management came to the realization that competing solely on price against other U.S. foundries wasn't a battle it wished to engage in for the long-term. With a higher wage rate than many of its southern foundry peers at the time, it needed to differentiate itself away from price. As a result, it consciously set out on a path to become "product developers" rather than "job bidders."

The path to conversions was kick-started in the late 1970s, when then-Product Development Manager George Peete approached Ford about replacing its forged steel connecting rods with ductile iron. After five years of extensive testing, the foundry convinced the automaker that it was the right application for ductile iron. After that achievement, an important question naturally followed: "If a connecting rod could be made from ductile iron, what else could be done?"

With that, the firm found it easier to pursue weldments, forgings and stampings and initial part designs than chasing existing foundry patterns. After a few successes, such as the connecting rod, doors opened to other conversion opportunities. To help, a task group consisting of a metallurgist, product development engineer, quality manager and product engineer frequently went "onroad" to make presentations on metalcasting and the foundry's capabilities to the customers' engineering staffs.

A few years after the connecting rod conversion victory, the foundry's design solution emphasis took deeper root. "Computer technology increased significantly, and at the same time the Big Three began saying it would eliminate some of its engineering and look for that capability from its suppliers - making them full-service," Mason said. "We already had fostered some great design talent, and step-by-step that sector of our business grew."

In regard to the landmark connecting rod application, history may be repeating itself. An Intermet customer is eager to convert another connecting rod design into ductile iron from another material, and the Wagner facility is a prime candidate for the program.

Development/Design Resources

The Wagner plant is unique among other corporate facilities in its level of onsite engineering and product development. With its own CAD and product engineers in Decatur, it augments Intermet's new 26-employee Technical Center in Lynchburg, Virginia. Intermet's combined design group is capable of developing and designing casting concepts, and it conducts design and finite elemental analysis (FEA) while utilizing all of the Big Three's required software (Catia, SDRC, Unigraphics, PDGS, Personal Designer, CADDS5 and Aries). Magma software is used for mold fill and solidification analysis, and CAD to CMM off-line programming software (added last summer) is used for reverse engineering, and allows networking between the CAD and metrology departments.

Over the past five years, more than $1 million was invested in the development/ design area at Decatur. The foundry also has a full-time machining engineer that helps troubleshoot designs/conversions with his knowledge of speeds, feeds and rates that affect productivity and quality.

Also unique among its industry peers, say company officials, is Intermet-Wagner's holistic, cradle-to-grave approach to design/development. On any given job, it will design the part, build it, submit it, PPAP (production part approval process) it, ensure all specifications are met, and work with machine shops to design and build gauges. And if there's a problem in manufacturing, design/development staffers remain involved. As one engineer stated, "While other foundries can get so swamped in building tooling, our engineers have time to do real thinking and design and are immersed in the project from the part's conception until it is placed on the car."

So while other foundries may make money by running a lot of castings, Intermet-Wagner has taken a "working smart" approach to survive and grow its business.

"Our engineers do far more than just take a widget, determine how many parts we can get into a mold, figure out how to feed it and calculate yield," said Mason. "They love it when they have a clean sheet of paper, and they'll take a part's weight out, strengthen it and cut costs. They find out how to get from point A to point B and figure out a way to ensure all customer requirements are met."

Another key point in this process is Intermet-Wagner's experimental foundry, which consists of a coreless induction furnace, several molding machines, and testing and X-ray capability. Initially used for making gating and yield changes, it is often used for prototyping today. When a new product must be evaluated, it is first produced in the experimental foundry. More than 200 new PPAPs are produced in the experimental foundry each year.

Intermet-Wagner also is unique in its compiled database for dynamic properties. Its ductile iron recipe was established 30 years ago by ductile iron expert (and former Wagner Castings vice president) Lyle Jenkins to deliver enhanced dynamic properties. As its technical director stated: "We look at the properties a bit differently and know how each part is expected to perform under dynamic loading."

In addition, in 1997, Intermet-Wagner became one of the first foundries in North America, along with the Intermet Technical Center, to earn certification to QS 9000 for design, manufacture and supply of ductile iron castings. While other foundries have pursued certification for casting production, few have become certified for design.

Conversions

While Intermet-Wagner finds it easier to start with a "blank page" than having to shift the paradigm of poorly influenced designs, conversions represent a good deal of "found work" for the foundry. Over the past five years alone, it has performed more than 100 part conversions from weldments, stampings or forgings to ductile iron castings. Of parts designed for conversion, the foundry estimates its success rate to be about 70%. In the Ductile Iron Group's Designs in Ductile Iron alone, more than 10% of all the casting conversions described are from Wagner. Recently, said Mason, the foundry was awarded a part on a program that had never succeeded as a casting before. "Our design was the first to ever pass the customer's survival test," he said.

Talking about the firm's conversion and design capabilities, one product development engineer said, "The last thing you want to tell us is that it can't be done in cast iron - we know it can. Our initial design might not be pretty, but we can often take the part, turn it into a casting, take the weight out and save the customer money.

"You just have to throw out the design preconceptions about stampings, forgings and weldments and figure out what the part must accomplish in the field. Once you've done a few of these and developed a rapport with customers, they start to see us as problem solvers. Sometimes they just scratch their head and say, 'Huh...I never thought of a casting like that.'"

Among its conversion successes are connecting rods/caps, aftermarket idler arms and tie rods (steel forgings), and engine mounts, engine brackets and spacers (aluminum castings and stampings).

The foundry had a large impact in one specific conversion area - malleable iron. In early 1997, it consciously exited its $25-million malleable iron business after 45 years pouring the metal. "We heard the wakeup call in 1989," said Mason, "when GM said 'There's no malleable product that we can't design into ductile iron and see a cost savings.'"

Wagner converted 50% of its malleable business to ductile, often with considerable cost savings. U.S. malleable iron shipments, incidentally, are expected to decline to 185,000 tons this year, and decline to one-third of that total by 2007.

With those conversions, geometry modifications were occasionally required (depending on the robustness of the existing shape) to address modulus and material behavior. In some cases, part shape was changed slightly to address other physical characteristics such as notch sensitivity and machining issues. Typical parts converted were end yokes, slip yokes, cam followers, shifters and carrier castings.

While the foundry has aggressively looked for non-cast parts to bring under the foundry industry umbrella, no one has sat back and allowed light metal proponents to call for the death of cast iron. As one engineer stated, "There's been a logical progression to aluminum due to the weight reduction trend, but cast iron has been painted in a bad light. Part of our job is to challenge that misconception - we can make good, thin-wall cast iron with higher strengths, better fatigue lives, reduced weights and at a lower cost to the customer. No one ever said cast iron had to be heavy. We just ask for the opportunity to go in and see what we can do.

"For instance, you can't have an isolated boss in aluminum because of solidification and shrinkage control. Thus, on some aluminum designs, there's material everywhere - it's needed to hold the casting together. We don't go after truly good aluminum designs, but we can make inroads on many."

Wagner's engineers have seen firsthand what has become an industry mantra - largely that casting design knowledge no longer exists as it once did, for reasons that include diminishing university casting curriculums. Naturally, uninformed designers aren't always willing to take much risk with a process that they don't understand.

"We don't say this to our customers," said one engineer, "but we'll do a better job designing their parts than they will. We know what parts can and can't be cost-effectively designed and produced as castings and then allow for the flexibility of the casting process."

Ford's CDW: Expertise in Action

The foundry's product design expertise is illustrated through Ford's CDW program for the Modeo-Contour-Mystique in the early 1990s. After Ford (who wanted to outsource all design work) awarded the program to Wagner Castings and a design consultant, Wagner expected it would cast 18 parts for the program. At Ford's request, Wagner sent its engineering manager to Ford's European headquarters to direct CAD activities.

When he arrived, he saw that some part shapes had already been produced as prototypes. He looked at a few parts and said things like "let's move this 90 [degrees], take the core out and broach the hole for a better casting." After getting to know the parts and asking "what-ifs?" Wagner soon received a green light to "do its thing" on parts that it could convert to castings. "After they became comfortable with us, they were pushing us to do more the engineer said. What had started out as 18 parts soon grew to 36.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Far into producing tooling for the design of 8-mm engine mount brackets (which were lighter than the previous aluminum parts), testing revealed that the brackets were too strong and were shearing the crash dummies' legs off at 35-mph head-on impact. If the part couldn't be produced to bend or break at that impact yet still endure 200,000 miles, Ford said that the part would return to aluminum.

Wagner contacted its powdered metal supplier in Decatur, who reconfigured the bushings in shapes that were thought could meet the test requirements. Within 13 days, the new parts (with a bushing change and different cast opening) were delivered to Ford, and promptly passed all tests. This 13-day adventure saved the program from returning to aluminum.

"An experience like that will drive any foundry to the forefront of product development," said the engineer working overseas on the project. "It forced us to step up and gave us our first exposure as a Tier-1 company, where we completely produced and supplied a finished component."

As another example, an auto parts supplier (and Wagner customer) was in a meeting at a Big Three automaker when it was announced that a steel forging producer failed to meet the requirements on an upper control arm. An engineer asked about the possibility of using ADI, and the supplier said, "Call Intermet-Wagner." Today, the foundry is producing that ADI upper control arm, which is 30% lighter than the forging design.

Of the change in direction taken in those fierce bidding days, one longtime employee said: "We did it to stay in business. It was better to compete against welders, stampers and forgers than trying to stay alive in a casting industry 'gas war.' It was a blessing in disguise - it helped us grow while other foundries went out of business."

Looking Ahead

Intermet Chairman/CEO John Doddridge and Mason agree that the acquisition of Wagner has provided many synergistic advantages for both firms, both in markets and in the combination of talents and abilities. As an illustration of that synergy, Intermet was awarded a 40,000-ton ductile iron steering knuckle program for eight GM vehicles in January, and the Wagner facility is expected to produce 17,000 tons of those safety program parts.

Intermet sees the trend of automakers relying on foundries for design expertise continuing, which is good for those in the industry who possess that knowledge. Looking ahead 10 years, Mason is confident about the future (ductile iron has a long-term annual growth rate of 2.9%) and said the organization will continue to embrace change, continuously improve and place highest emphasis on the customer.

"Tomorrow's successful foundry will need to deliver even closer tolerances and continue to reduce scrap," Mason said. "The next large horizon for us is not only how to successfully convert weldments or other parts to ductile iron - it will be how to create thinner sections and more complex designs. And together with the other Intermet locations, we intend to be on the forefront of that change."

Intermet-Wagner Castings

a subsidiary of Intermet Corp.

Decatur, Illinois 

Casting Data: ferritic and pearlitic ductile irons. 1997 Shipments: 65,000 tons.

Markets Served: automotive (steering knuckles and components for transmissions, engines, suspension and chassis).

Processes: vertically parted green sand molding, a limited amount of shell coremaking (coremaking outsourced), coreless induction melting.

Value-Added Capabilities: product design/development, experimental foundry, heat treating. Size: 390,000 sq ft.

Customers: Ford, Chrysler and GM.

Employees: 606 (United Paper Workers International).

Year Founded: 1917.

Plant Officials: Jim Mason, president; Hal Robinson, vice president of manufacturing; John Benda, vice president of finance; Dee Hill, vice president of human resources; and David Simms, director of quality and technical.

RELATED ARTICLE: Wagner's New Molding Line Expansion

In the summer of 1996, the Wagner plant added its fifth Disamatic molding installation, which has been referred to as "one of the finest new molding installations in the world." The $15-million expansion, which included a new 100 x 100 x 50 ft building, features one of the world's longest cooling lines (300-plus ft) that runs directly through the former malleable iron foundry.

In addition to the Disamatic 2013 Mk-V (capacity 440 mold/hr), the expansion included a Didion media drum, Wheelabrator Ultrablast continuous blast machine, Carrier vibrating conveyors, a Simpson Multicooler and multimull with compactibility controller, and a state of the art sand system.

Metal handling consists of an automated iron delivery monorail with two hot metal carriers, four 6000-lb transfer ladles and four 6000-lb Fischer Converters (ductile iron treatment) and an ABB presspour furnace, which features a wire inoculation system. The expansion also features two dust collector systems (Torit and Wheelabrator). The sand system equipment and layout of sand handling equipment was provided by the H.G. Mouat Co.

A sixth Disamatic will be installed in Decatur when customer requirements warrant the additional capacity.