Marketing, quality control and environment take center stage.

"Where have all the foundries gone?"

That was the rhetorical question keynote speaker Hugh Sims put to the foundry men and women attending the 51st New England Regional Conference sponsored jointly by the New England and Connecticut Chapters of AFS. Sims, a past AFS president and currently vice president of Vulcan Engineering Co., told conferees that many foundries have succumbed to the burdens placed on them by government rules and regulations introduced in the last decade.

So much effort is required to comply with these mandates, Sims asserted, that competing in the aggressive, new world marketplace has simply moved beyond their ability to make a profit. The incentives of ownership have been eroded by bureaucratic overmanagement and mismanagement to the point where the U.S., which once controlled 40% of the world's economy, has seen that lead slip today to just over 20%. Sims called for a reindustrialization of America through programs that take care of society's needs, but that do so at a cost that the nation can afford and in a manner that recognizes the realistic needs of American business to compete effectively in the global economy.

Quality Stressed

One of the persistent themes of the conference was the need to upgrade product quality. Addressing this vital issue was Richard C. Olson, a longtime industrial consultant and an associate certified quality engineer. He confronted some of the myths associated with quality control, including those that erroneously associate QC with increased manufacturing costs and that assume that tight specifications assure top product quality.

Olson also enumerated the warning signals that indicate quality problems some of which include: rising numbers of customer complaints, frequent material shortages, increasing repairs of finished goods and recurring QC problems. Good quality, he concluded, requires sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution.

OSHA Update

Ed Bajakian, OSHA regional safety engineer, defined an accident as an unplanned event resulting in a loss. Most industrial accidents occur, he said, when training and procedures are not followed or become outdated, especially where tagout and lockout rules are concerned. Bajakian described several fatal incidents caused by sudden and unexpected machinery start-ups and illustrated how they happened. He attributed the accidents to uninformed actions by untrained employees working under inadequate safety procedures.

OSHA, Bajaian said, insists on lockout/tagout procedures for each piece of plant equipment and for each electrical, air or hydraulic energy source. The agency also insists that in-plant safety procedures be made available to outside contractors working under contract as mechanics or consultants. Since the penalty structure attached to ignoring adequate lockout/tagout procedures have increased seven-fold, installing them makes good economic sense in addition to preventing serious accidents.

OSHA Senior Hygienist Fred Malaby explained his agency's position on setting and administering an employee hazard communications program. He said OSHA's version of the employees' right-to-know provisions mandates written procedures and policies to inform employees what chemicals they are exposed to on their jobs. He said that such written procedures extend to contract employees as well.

Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) provided by materials suppliers list exposure limits and must be readily available to teach employees how to handle hazardous materials.

Malaby said that MSDSs could be required of foundries, citing bronze castings that require customer warnings that certain finishing operations such as grinding or welding could be hazardous.

Marketing

AFS Marketing Services Manager John Rost told conferees that market research as it relates to individual foundry capabilities is an important factor in foundry profitability. He stressed the importance of analyzing production strengths and aggressively marketing them. Profitability, Rost said, is a function of knowing precisely what a foundry can do successfully and matching those profit centers to a carefully analyzed market potential.

Instead of trying to be all things to all customers, it is far more advantageous for a foundry's management to recognize company strengths and combine them with known marketplace demands. Foundries need to know what products and services make money, to be aware of market niches, and to pursue those avenues relentlessly. Rost urged that internal operations audits and external market analysis be part of each foundry's marketing plan. Matching the strengths of the two areas can be the difference between a foundry just making the payroll and operating at a profit.