Another example of American companies bringing back production that had been outsourced to low-cost countries was in last week’s Fortune magazine. According to the article, “Made (again) in America,”  the cost of shipping outsourced goods from China to the U.S. has doubled in two years due to high oil prices and rising labor costs in China. The article focuses on cookware producer Regal Ware, which has largely abandoned its 10-year effort to source goods to Chinese manufacturers. It turns out that executives at Regal Ware determined their manufacturing process was experiencing a costly bottleneck at its overseas locations, causing an inventory crunch back in the States.

 From the article:

"We either had too much inventory, or not enough" of the products Regal Ware outsourced to China, says Jeffrey Reigle, CEO of the Kewaskum, Wisc.-based company. "We figured there had to be a better way."

The better way, it turns out, proved to be right under his nose, at two Wisconsin plants where Regal Ware has produced stainless steel pots and pans for more than 50 years.

No, manufacturers aren’t exactly stampeding to bring production back to domestic plants, but anecdotal evidence, at least, shows that outsourcing to a low-cost country is not as low-cost as once thought. For those companies who have already invested money in the infrastructure to support outsourcing manufacturing, coming back isn’t an easy decision, either. At what point do companies feel it’s time to return manufacturing to the U.S.? And for all the press that the return of manufacturing is receiving, is it truly becoming a trend?
 

In its exhaustive and exemplary coverage of the automotive manufacturing industry, the Saginaw News recently asked, from where are the parts in our automobiles sourced?

MODERN CASTING and Engineered Casting Solutions asked this question some months ago in “Castings Are Closer Than They Appear” (January MC, January/February ECS), and the results of Saginaw’s exploration turned out to be similar, though the newspaper worked from different supporting data.

The force of the daily’s story was that a company based in one country doesn’t necessarily source its components, including castings, from that same country. The straight news article doesn’t get into why the sourcing decisions are made (perhaps they’re planning to deliver those answers in a later news analysis story), but it offers good evidence for local casting sourcing.

According to reporter Barrie Barber’s research, “on average, domestic carmakers sport about an 80% North American parts content,” just 30% more than Toyota, which averages about 50%. Again, the goal of the piece is not to go into the reasoning behind this surprising fact, but it coincides neatly with companies like Toyota moving many of their assembly plants into domestic markets.

Car companies aren’t the only casting end-users moving into domestic markets (see “What Your Customers Are Thinking” in the upcoming issue of MODERN CASTING). Domestic metalcasters must recognize this fact and win this new business while it’s available.

It’s staggering the number of people that want to give metalcasting a go on their own.

The latest incident we found was regaled in an article in the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. According to the story, a high school science teacher built a furnace in a hole in his lawn and somewhat-successfully cast trinkets out of scrapped soda cans. It’s a fascinating story, but you’re on the edge of your seat the entire time waiting for this unsupervised, improvised project to go terribly awry.

The most common metalcasting hobbyists we come across (or more appropriately, come across us) are enthusiasts who want to rebuild something from the past—a marine or automotive part that has been lost to history. Most of the time, these hobbyists want to build something that no one else will build for them, either due to the component’s lack of profitability or because it would take too much time to develop the know-how to produce it.

There’s an allure of self-sufficiency there that metalcasting hobbyists simply can’t ignore. These men highlight the mystical draw of the metalcasting process—the glowing metal, the sparks, the completed component emerging as if a Bundt cake from a pan(which are themselves cast, by the way).

Men like the high school teacher from Lancaster, on the other hand, highlight the strides the metalcasting industry makes on a regular basis. According to the article, the tinkerer produced what “looked like crumpled wads of aluminum foil rolled in sand.” Professional metalcasters produce parts that are critical to the operation of an airplane at 30,000 ft.

The article goes on to say that the untrained science teacher scared passersby and his wife with the potential for an injurious accident. Professional metalcasters have decreased the number of accidents that occur on their watch for two years in a row, according to data published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In 2006, the year for which the data is last available, the industry reported 11.9 injuries or illnesses for every 100 full-time employees, down from 13.5 in 2005 (a 12% improvement) and 14 in 2004.

The general public may think that metalcasting is an antiquated, dangerous industry that produces nothing but manhole covers, but for many modern casters, that is simply untrue. We thank the metalcasting hobbyists whose amateur attempts highlight this fact…as long as they stay safe.

We’ve met many people in the industry who are passionate about metalcasting, but we’re hard-pressed to think of someone with the same kind of passion as a woman from Kawaguchi, Japan.

A recent article from the Japanese newspaper, Daily Yomiuri, tells the story of 23-year-old percussionist Sayaka Nojiri, who is promoting the metalcasting industry the best way she knows how—drumming.

The daughter and granddaughter of metalcasters, Nojiri is hoping to promote the industry that was once a pride of the city but since has dwindled. She turns metal castings made in Kawaguchi into percussion instruments for recitals around town—her way of showing gratitude to the city, she said.

From the article:

"She turned metal-cast products, including frying pans, into percussion instruments by putting holes in them to create a variety of unusual sounds.

At her recital last year, she improvised for an audience of about 300, while imagining the sounds and smells of foundries and the feel of the casting process."

Maybe we should start taking drum lessons.
 

Metalcasters want to sell you castings, whether you know it or not.

Just how much they want to sell you castings was apparent at the recent Marketing and Selling of Castings Conference, put on from July 31 to August 1 by the American Foundry Society. With more than 160 metalcasters making their way to the Chicago area this year, attendance was up more than 100% from 2007. If you arrived late to the conference room at the Westin O’Hare, you couldn’t get a seat.

The relationship between casting makers and buyers is unique in the world of manufacturing. It’s not like many component producing/consuming relationships, where there is only one industry that can satisfy the needs of the buyer. Industries that can benefit from castings sometimes don’t even know the products exist. And metalcasters often don’t know who needs their products.

Events like the Marketing and Selling of Castings Conference are designed to bridge this gap in the supply chain. They’re an attempt to bring casting sellers and buyers together and allow them to network and bounce ideas off each other. Among the presenters at the conference were representatives from five companies that use metal castings—Caterpillar, Winergy Drive Systems (USA), FMC Technologies Inc., Haas Automation and Cummins Inc. Those particular sessions were great opportunities for metalcasters to hear exactly what their customers want from them.

The conference was also a great opportunity for metalcasting buyers to find out exactly what their suppliers want from them. Even if you didn’t attend the conference and get the details, rest assured. One thing your suppliers apparently want is to deliver you the products you need. Sometimes, that can be difficult to come by, but by working closely with a metalcaster on the design of your desired components, you can develop a close relationship and a quality engineered component.

A new hotel has opened up in Milwaukee that caters to the motorcycle enthusiast and business professional alike. Located across from the new Harley Davidson Museum, the Iron Horse Hotel features a masculine, yet modern design, complete with aluminum sculptures in every room meant to represent molten metal in a metalcasting facility.

From its website:

In keeping with its theme of fusing industrial aesthetics with cutting edge amenities, The Iron Horse Hotel commissioned Milwaukee sculptor Amber Van Galder to create unique works of art out of recycled aluminum. The original pieces are displayed above beds in the concept hotel’s guest rooms.

Van Galder created the pieces to resemble industrial metal spills commonly found on the floors of metal foundries. The artist melted down 40 pounds of recycled aluminum for each piece, pouring the spills into sand, and then hand polishing them to a brilliant patina.

An Evansville, Wisconsin native, Van Galder graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2007.  While studying art there, she developed a close relationship with Professor Dan McGuire, who trained her in traditional foundry work. This discipline re-united Van Galder with her Evansville roots; the rural community boasts an industrial foundry that has been operational for more than 130 years. 

We’re not thrilled with the exaggerated phrase “metal spills commonly found on the floors of metal foundries,” but the end result is cool. A quick look in our directory has us thinking the metalcasting facility in Evansville they are referring to is Baker Manufacturing Co., which has been around since 1873.
 

The cover story in the June 30 edition of Business Week asks a question on every manufacturer’s mind: “Can the U.S. Bring Jobs Back from China?” Oil prices are driving up transportation costs, wages in China are increasing 10-15% a year, and the American dollar is falling against world currencies. This could be a good time for the American manufacturing industry to make a comeback. But, as the article points out, it won’t be easy.

Most of us are familiar with this scenario: A company wants to cut costs. It explores ways to source its parts for less. Its American supplier can’t compete with China’s low costs, so a Chinese supplier wins the contract. Two years later, the cost savings aren’t nearly what were expected, and the company turns back to its American supplier. But that manufacturing sector has shrunk due to closings, and available capacity is hard to find.

For the optimistic, this could be an opportune time for metalcasters, as well as other manufacturers, to invest in increasing their capacity as more OEMs are looking to source domestically. However, after several years of watching job after job head offshore, it’s understandable that suppliers are a little gun-shy.

In the article, iron metalcasting facility Donsco is offered as an example of the impact offshoring has had on the American manufacturing industry:

Despite growing demand, [Donsco Chairman Art] Mann says Donsco will be "real cautious" about spending the $30 million and two years needed to build a new foundry. The impact of this reluctance is being felt in Belen, N.M., where CEMCO, a maker of rock-crushing and farming equipment, is looking to cut costs and logistical headaches. The company today imports many metal parts from Asia but would prefer to buy domestically because of rising shipping rates and the weak dollar. "American foundries now can compete head-to-head on cost, but there aren’t many foundries, welders, machinists, and quality-control engineers," says James B. Turk, CEMCO’s chief financial officer. "What we had 10 years ago is gone." Where did all the capacity go? Mainly to China, where modern foundries are proliferating.

Suppliers are in the tough situation of turning away customers that two years ago they would have loved to have. So what now? As the article points out, China’s wages and transportation costs may be increasing, but so are productivity, research and development. And large corporations that have already invested chunks of money in establishing a supply base in Chinese cities will be slow to abandon them.

The good news is that OEMs may be having second thoughts about sourcing their newest product lines to foreign locations. Inflation and increased commodity prices have helped even out the price balance between Chinese and American metalcasters. And the “survival of the fittest” theory seems to have held true for the metalcasting industry. Perhaps the American manufacturing industry is primed for a revival.
 

An employee for May Foundry and Machine Co., Salt Lake City, Utah, recently was featured on a local radio program about the lives of Utahans.

According to the story on KUER FM90, a public radio station licensed to the Univ. of Utah, David Thomlin has been working for May Foundry for more than 38 years. He got a job at the plant shoveling coal from railroad cars and began his career as a molder nine months later. Today, he is the ferrous nobake shop’s lead molder.

Thomlin hasn’t become rich working in the metalcasting facility, the story tells us, but he has all the things he needs and provides for his family.

“I still enjoy coming in, and I still enjoy making something,” he told the radio station. “I’m taking a raw material, sand, and putting it with some chemicals and taking junk, basically, and creating something, and it’s going to be used by thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people—if I did my job right.”

The radio spot also goes into some detail on the metalcasting process itself, indicating it can be used to make a variety of items, including parts “for a snow blower” or “a carbon regenerating plant that makes briquettes.”

“I think it was rather nice and a testament to the kinds of workers and employees we have here [at May Foundry],” said Mike May, customer service and safety manager.

From time to time, we’ll field calls from casting buyers trying to make a decision between alloys or casting processes. We can’t make that choice for them; we can only provide information that willlead to an educated decision. But, really, that’s a lot of information, and the number of different ways you can produce a casting can make the process daunting.

In conjunction with the American Foundry Society and Product Development & Analysis, we’ve developed a Casting Alloy and Process Selector tool to help casting buyers and designers determine which casting alloys and process(es) may be suitable for their specific metal casting designs. All you need to do is enter basic data about the metal casting (if available, alloy, weight, wall thicknesses, surface finish, production volume), and various processes will be presented to you.

The information contained in the tool represents industry averages and cannot be considered absolute. Every manufacturing facility offers different capabilities, so for specific information, you should contact your metal casting suppliers. But the tool will help you narrow down your choices. Good luck!
 

The annual Engineered Casting Solutions Casting Competition provides an example of what the metalcasting process can achieve. While the winners may not relate specifically to the type of engineered cast components you purchase, these design success do provide you with fodder for what your firm could achieve if you unleash the design potential afforded to you by metal castings.

I urge you to consider starting with a blank sheet of paper the next time you begin to design a metal casting.  Be bounded only by the space envelope in which the part must function. Then, place metal where you need it, and use geometry to achieve the functionality you need. If you are attaching and/or welding other components to the casting, could the entire assembly be redesigned to a single cast component? Freedom of design is inherent in the benefits of the metalcasting process. If you take advantage of it, engineered casting solutions are in your future.