New dualtech foundry to compete in speed business: a look inside the year-old Dualtech prototype casting operation reveals the culture needed to compete in a business focused on speed and service.

Whatever it is you see in your mind when you hear the word "foundry," Dualtech is on the outer fringes of that definition. The year-old greenfield plant is run by seven people, is air-conditioned, and consists of a team culture that is not hostage to any semblance of hierarchy. And even more unique is the fact that it was built with 100% new equipment in late 2002, when it was hard to find a new foundry being built anywhere, not to mention one by a firm that would be pouring its first ever castings.

Recalled President Jack Laugle, "The people at the bank said, "Excuse me, sir, but do you happen to know what's going on in the foundry industry right now? And you want rebuild a brand new one?"

Founded in '97

Laugle, 38, is a second-generation patternmaker who dabbled in injection molding engineering before embarking on a 10-year career at Cunningham Pattern & Engineering, Columbus, Indiana.

When it was time for a change in March 1997, he and his wife decided to start their own pattern and prototype casting company--incidentally the same week his wife, gave birth to their second child. With the help of "robbing the family piggy banks," Innovative Casting Technologies (ICT) was established in a Franklin, Indiana, pole barn and was soon making patterns and managing the prototype casting supply chain for customers. It moved to its present location in a new building in July 2000. The ICT side of the business features seven CNC machining centers, a coordinate measuring machine, computer terminals, and other miscellaneous machining support equipment. Machining centers are dedicated to both casting machining and pattern machining (polyurethane tooling boards).

At the onset, ICT did not do any casting inhouse; this was all contracted to other foundries. "I became increasingly illustrated when I couldn't get castings here on time" said Laugle. "We were trying to compress leadtimes and sell speed, but we were waiting three weeks for the casting alone. It's understandable; the foundries we were buying from had more important customers than us. Building our own foundry would be the last piece needed for a 100% turnkey operation, and we knew we could compress the leadtimes if we had the control."

In addition to controlling deliveries, there'd he a sizeable benefit on the machining side through less tool wear and easier process flow. "There are certain points within a range of tensile strengths, hardnesses and chemistries that give you better machinability," said Laugle. "When you're buying castings, you select a wider range to keep the costs down. From the machining perspective, this is like hunting a rabbit with an elephant gun, with our own foundry, if we did things right, we could make sure we'd be holding a rabbit gun when it's time to machine."

In April 2002, Laugle found a partner in printing industry veteran Dan Perritt to form Dualtech (as the new foundry, a sister firm to ICT is called) and started pouring iron and aluminum in September 2002. Describing the plant and equipment, Laugle said that partnering "allowed us to build a Cadillac instead of an Oldsmobile," while not involved in the day to day operations, Perritt has assisted in forming strategies on the business operation and sales side, said Laugle.

Shiny New, Cool

Dualtech is across the parking lot (about 50 yards away) from the ICT building in the new industrial park. Patterns are machined in the ICT building, transferred to the foundry, and castings are then returned to ICT for finish machining, painting (if needed) and final shipment.

Laugle said that the new foundry was designed from years of his mental filing of war stories from other foundrymen. He remembered a meeting at Caterpillar in which numerous foundrymen began sharing past production nightmares and what "they'd have done differently if in charge." Laugle kept a close ear to such conversations, dreaming of one day building his own foundry.

Two things jump out at visitors entering the foundry for the first time. First, 100% of the equipment is new, with no visible shortcuts taken during a time that Laugle must have been tempted by the proliferation of used equipment available on the cheap. Second, the foundry is air-conditioned.

Describing the all-new approach to plant equipment, Laugle said, "When you put in used machinery, you inherit someone else's problems." The four furnaces, core machine, sand mixer, table blast, and lab equipment are all new. Tire only piece that was not delivered directly from the manufacturer was the mold line, which, in the final analysis, would still earn that "new" designation. The new nobake mold line had been self-designed by AB Chance for its Hubble Foundry in Centralia, Missouri, but never saw a drop of metal, despite being near-completion. Laugle heard about the system and moved tire entire line to Dualtech.

The compact nobake molding line borrows the pallet line concept often found in small green sand operations. Once the molds are stripped, they are transferred to a short staging area via pallet cars. From there, they are pushed to the pouring area, then to a fume hood and then to shakeout via a dump station. Transfer to shakeout is handled via a dump station and, once shaken out, sand is conveyed to the reclaimer and to a storage hopper over the mixer. "The system requires little labor," said Lee White of Palmer Manufacturing, one of several suppliers helping to launch the foundry. "It's a nice succinct system, requiring little floor space, and is very productive."

According to Laugle, production on the system is 5-25 molds/hr, depending on the size and number of cores. About 75% of the sand is reclaimed, he said.

The other novel feature of the foundry is its air conditioning, which Laugle said was relatively simple to incorporate into the operation. With melting/pouring in the middle of the building, all heat is trapped in the center and exhausted out the top, and two 20-ton air conditioners keep the air comfortable. Within 20 minutes of pouring, the temperature is no higher than 80 degrees on the melt deck.

The cost to cool the air is essentially free, said Laugle, since the firm must pay for a certain electrical demand usage anyway. "It's basically paid for by the demand we would have to cover regardless."

Describing the startup, Laugle said he was pleased with how" the foundry took flight. With most employees making their first castings, Dualtech relied heavily on suppliers and consultants (namely Greta, Inc.) for what he called Foundry 101 training. Because casting is new to the workers, he said little is taken for granted and everyone relies a great deal on process control checklists. The firm received its ISO TS16949 2002 certification in May fox the production of patterns, tooling and castings.

A Different Culture

Beyond learning from others' woes on the technical side of foundry operation, Laugle also vowed not to repeat personnel mistakes that he had witnessed over the years. This is evident in Dualtech's team concept, which is not only "nice to have" in a company, but absolutely essential in the speed business.

All Dualtech workers are cross-trained. Most of the employees can machine patterns and castings, run the layout equipment and help in the foundry. Meanwhile the foundry laborers can run and calibrate most production and lab equipment. Laugle is regularly seen on the floor lending his hands, too.

"Two guys slept here last night," said Laugle. "Like it or not, that kind of commitment is necessary in the prototype and short-run business. If your kid has a Little League game, you should be there. Because of cross training, someone else will step in and make sure that the customer gets their parts."

"The key is seeing that everyone's on the same page. When a customer needs the castings, we need to collectively do whatever it takes."

He added that at many companies, you often feel a wall between functions, and "it's always the other guy's fault. "At Dualtech, the cross-training eliminates the protection of territories. Laugle noted that there is no structured hierarchy or titles, and in fact, Laugle himself has no title on his business card. This was part of his plan to ensure that change and good ideas would not be killed simply because a title or organizational chart provided any semblance of an individual's veto power.

As an example, for customer meetings, whomever is most free is who attends. Laugle doesn't care who it is, as long as someone from the foundry, pattern production, and casting machining are all present.

The key, he said, is good hiring. Most hires came recommended from current employees--brothers-in-laws, neighbors and cousins. "Everyone takes a turn cleaning the john here," said Laugle. "And if someone said he would only machine patterns, they couldn't survive here. If god-forbid we ever did hire that type of person, the other guys would cat them up and spit them out."

By staying small, they can choose the right people for the job, and also protect the culture. Interestingly, the entire company plays together on the same softball team.

On the end table in Laugle's office is a book, It's Not the Big That Eats the Small; It's the Fast that Eats the Slow, from which Laugle regularly cites. "Success is all about personnel," he said. "You need people that want to ran."

Firefighting Mentality

Not only did the economy frown on the first-year startup, but to add insult to injury, Laugle was surprised to find more competitors in his niche. Not foreign operations, but rather domestic foundries lowering their volume requirements in an attempt to keep their lights on. "Two years ago, some of these foundries would never have touched 50 or even 500 pieces a year, but they sure are now."

He remains upbeat however, and expects to add three people and a second shift in the next six to nine months. The capacity is in place for $23 million in casting sales, and Laugle feels good about the foundry's chances as the economy recovers.

About 50% of the business is what he called fast-turnaround prototypes and production pacts, with the other 50% being low-volume production. Dualtech's customer base includes tier-ones such as Cummins, Deem, Tecumseh, Caterpillar and Parker-Hannifin. It is regularly shipping machined parts within 3-4 weeks of receiving the CAD file, with about one week of that time spent in the foundry.

"For one customer who needed parts for an engine build ASAP, we shipped five six-port exhaust manifolds 13 days after receiving the CAD file," said Laugle. "You need an engineer knowledgeable about casting to meet this kind of schedule, but it can be done.

"We're working on that end too, educating engineers and making sure they're thinking of production. Through design reviews, we regularly can take designs that may have four cores and 10 loose pieces to one that may need, say, two cores and no loose pieces.

Unlike many small foundry presidents who must be on the road finding work, Laugle is nearly always in the office. "When our salesman calls with a job that absolutely must be run this week," said Laugle, "I've got the schedule before me to juggle things."

Being involved with the daily activities and scheduling helps him understand the work load in order to honestly tell customers just what the timing would be on any rash project. "On most days, we have machines in the pattern shop or machine area that aren't running. These are our firehouse machines--they're open to put out the fires when the need arises. When the phone rings that is what determines the schedule--where the fire is. I'm just the fire chief making the call to put this fire out or get it in the schedule immediately."

Simple firefighting. That's how to survive in a casting business based on speed.

Dualtech Franklin, Indiana

Year Founded: 2002.

Metals Cast: 319 and 356 aluminum, and gray and ductile iron (including high silicon molybdenum and Ni-Resist).

Mold Capabilities: Nobake.

Melt Capabilities: Coreless induction and electric resistance furnaces.

Size: 12,000 sq ft.

Key Markets: Agriculture, automotive, construction, light truck and SUVs.

2003 Casting Sales

Forecast: $750,000.

Employees: 15 (seven in the foundry).

Additional Services: Pattern and casting machining provided through Innovative Casting Technologies (ICT) in adjacent building.

Corporate Officials: Jack Laugle, President; Rick Ell, Sales; Dave Claycamp, Quality; Tony Luenebrink, Patterns; Brian Claycamp, Foundry; Aric Heckman, Machining.

For More Information

For a list of plant equipment at Dualtech, visit "For More Information" at www.moderncasting.com.