Navigating the digital world can be intimidating for many in the foundry industry. We focus on melting iron and turning it into engine blocks for long-haul trucks, kettlebells, and steel girders for skyscrapers. Making the most of the digital revolution and the opportunities it offers might seem like learning a foreign language if not entirely unnecessary. People who think the latter will through around phrases like “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and “this is the way we’ve always done things.” Well, here’s another one, “if you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse.”
In truth, you never really maintain. Keeping a picket fence white requires a fresh coat of paint every couple of years. In the same way, your business is either constantly improving or losing ground. Maybe if your foundry operated in a vacuum, you could leave everything alone, but that environment doesn’t exist, especially in a global economy. Your competitors aren’t limited to the neighboring counties or even the next state over. Chances are, you have to compete with companies on the other side of the ocean, and the rise of on-demand ordering thanks to the internet has only made the competition that much fiercer.
The question remains, how can your foundry use the digital revolution to its advantage? There are several ways:
Marketing
Advertising your products and making them available online is a great advantage over the past. If you do things right and put together a quality website, you can showcase your processes, equipment, workforce, awards, and anything else you can think of. With a bit of effort, you can do all of this not just with pictures and blog posts but videos, interviews, and testimonials.
It also becomes easier to track the effectiveness of these and other marketing approaches like brochures, client gifts, and holiday cards. How so?… by tracking whether or not sales go up after the latest round of cards goes out and tracking who does the buying. By tracking the responses to different marketing methods, you will learn where best to spend your resources to build your business.
Quality control
Using digital scanning technology makes it easier to ensure that products meet the necessary specifications, meaning that fewer bad products go out the door and the problem can be isolated and corrected faster.
Process improvement – Using sensors that monitor all the various production steps, a foundry can detect points in the process that may be lagging or aspects that are over-performing. That is to say; if a line producing air compressor tanks are moving more efficiently than projected, the data can be analyzed to determine why and to see if the cause is something that can be duplicated on another product line producing wrought iron fencing. The cause may be found and either eliminated or replicated in either case.
Equipment monitoring
Similarly, it is also possible to measure individual pieces of equipment. For example, by continually measuring vibrations, it is possible to detect when a given machine is degrading long before it starts cranking out products that won’t pass inspection. In doing so, maintenance can be scheduled in advance instead of only working on it when it has already broken and disrupted the production schedule.
These are just some of the many ways that the digital revolution can be used to make your foundry more competitive. One word of warning – it isn’t enough to merely collect data. You have actually to analyze it and put the results into action. In doing so, you can take advantage of these new advances to make your entire operation more efficient and profitable.
