Foundry Of The Future

THE FOUNDRY OF THE FUTURE™

American Casting Company has the capability to construct on-site, purpose built and demand driven foundries co-located with your manufacturing plants. These focused foundries combine the speed and reliability benefits of American Casting Company's demand flow production system with the efficiencies created by co-location. The result is The Foundry of the Future™ and it has compelling delivery, quality and cost advantages. The Foundry of the Future™ will be particularly advantageous to companies that have well established pull production systems, as the co-located foundry can be fully linked with the customer's lines.

The comparison chart below highlights the dramatic benefits The Foundry of the Future™ has as compared to traditional methods of procuring castings:

TRADITIONAL FOUNDRIES	THE FOUNDRY OF THE FUTURE™

Methods	Methods
Schedules by department - push system	Demand pull scheduling
Scheduled inspection operations	Real-time Total Quality Control
Management by computer printout	Visual management
Specialized employee skills by department	Flexible teams running a line
Inventory queue at each department	Finished goods inventory only
Part travel measured in miles	Part travel less than 50 feet
Long distance problem-solving	Real-time problem solving
Quarterly continuous improvement meetings	Improvement idea today - implemented tomorrow

Characteristics	Characteristics
Long lead time	Lead time in minutes
Unreliable delivery	100% on-time
Schedule inflexibility	Any part on any day
Solving quality problems slow and expensive	Problems solved now with no discrepant WIP
High inventory cost	Zero inventory cost
High purchasing administration cost	Zero purchasing administration cost
Continuous improvement of old methods	Better methods

Goals	Goals
Inventory reduction	Zero in-process inventory
Reduced lead time	Zero lead time
Year over year price reductions	Lowest possible supply chain cost