Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Thomas E. Prucha
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of
the
7-Is
to
Improve
Involvement,
Investigation
Innovation
Implementation
Improvement
Integration
Informing
INVOLVEMENT
The first and most important I is Involvement. For any
project to be successful it must have the active
participation and interest of many parties that represent
such different roles like the Investigator (university or
private researcher), the funding source (private sector,
trade association, government), technology users like the
metal casters and their suppliers (equipment or material)
and perhaps even the users of the castings produced
taking advantage of the new technology to improve their
products or services their offer their customers. We have
found that research developing technology that has no
Technical Committees
Develop concepts and projects to meet needs of
our members, industry and society
Promotes industry needs to the Division
Leadership
Division Council
Assures AFS committee structure that is strong
and vibrant
Reviews and ensures that adequate resources are
available to address their needs
Interfaces with the AFS Board of Directors
Provides feedback and guidance to the Technical
Committees
o Focus on Industry needs
o Aligns activities with AFS Mission
Statement and Strategic Plan
o Approaches to meet those goals
Research Board
Evaluates proposals for funding against the
identified and prioritized needs: AFS Technology
Development Plan of each Division
Provides feedback to the Division and their
Technical Committees
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ENGINEERING
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ALUMINUM
COPPER ALLOY
MOLDING METHODS AND MATERIALS
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CAST IRON
MAGNESIUM
MELTING METHODS AND MATERIALS
STEEL
You can see just some of the topics that are of interest to
those members, but most are improvement focused. I will
discuss a couple of these as examples of how this 7-I
approach is assisting us.
INVESTIGATION
So next we move to the Investigation Process, which first
involves the steps to develop, propose and the conduct
research that addresses the needs as expressed in these
various Technology and Research Deployment plans of
your key interest groups, like our technical committees.
The researcher must seek the involvement of industrial
partners on their project monitoring and steering
committees, also their participation via either monetary or
in-kind to support the project efforts. That is why we
have participation by many university members on our
committees to listen to the Voice of the Customer and
craft projects that meet their needs.
Before our AFS Research Board will select a project,
even one that has very good technical merit, They judge
this participation (involvement) and ask: Does the project
have a steering committee representing industry selected?
Have they demonstrated their interest and support of the
need to conduct this work via letters of support, offers of
monetary backing or in-kind support like material,
software, and the use of their facilities to assist
conducting the work? Besides the technology being
developed, we look at these projects as a platform where
the Next Generation of metal casters can experiment and
learn their craft. Below is an example of students activity
involved in conducting project work either at their
university lab or at a manufacturing plant (Figure 2).
INNOVATION
But we also must be careful not to constrain and stifle
Innovation. We encourage the researchers to think
Outside the Box; dont just try approaches that allow for
only incremental improvements, but also attempt gamechanging solutions.
The investigators should seek opportunities in other
sectors and disciplines, not just metal casting or materials
to help advance our technology Such an example was
the interface by Dr. Ramrattan at Western Michigan
University with Prof. Joyce of the WMU Paper Products
Department on a project where we in the investigation of
understanding and improving mold and core coating we
looked to that industry to see how they managed coatings.
We found to improve, that the foundry industry needs
quality assurance tools to properly characterize refractory
coatings. To date no published work had demonstrated a
correlation between the traditional Baum control of
coatings and casting dimensions or surface finish. The
paper industry has a sophisticated set of standard test
methods used as quality control tools at the mill to
characterize and measure properties of many multipurpose coatings. This project explored the applicability
of these tests to the foundry industry.
We discovered new evaluation tests that were more
sensitive and informative than the traditional Baume test.
We also ask that they learn from what has gone before to
build, dont just discard the approach because it is old but
also dont be afraid to try something new, Figures 3-7.
INTREGRATION
The technology must be integrated into the way we do
business. We must embrace it and have it become an
essential tool and not just an interesting curiosity. To
succeed
FIG. 10. ISOSET WATER JACKET CORE Starobin, Goettsch, Walker, Burch, Gas pressure in
aluminum water jacket cores, International Journal
2
of Metal Casting, Summer 2011
FIG. 20. TOP COPE SECTION AND BOTTOMDRAG SECTION WITH CORE, Naro, Pelfrey, Gas
Evolution of Synthetic Binders: Relationship to
Casting Blowhole Defects, AFS Transactions, 83-39,
4
pp. 365-376
INFORMATION - ILLUMINATION
Finally, we need to seek opportunities and venues to
illuminate and inform the entire casting industry so that
these advancements and improvement are more broadly
based and implemented. This can take many different
approaches and forms; from traditional conferences,
meetings and publications to trying new techniques like
webinars, like our Technology Transfer Thursdays (see
Figures 24 & 25) and the new social media opportunities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper is scheduled for presentation at the 71st World
Foundry Congress 2014, May 19-21, Blibao, Spain and
publication5 in the proceedings of the 71st WFC.
Permission to republish this paper has been kindly
supplied to the IIF by the World Foundry Organization.
REFERENCES
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