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Seven Steps to Energy Efficiency for Foundries

Sham H. Arjunwadkar, Meghana R. Ransing, Rajesh Ransing Orcid Logo

Foundry Management and Technology, Volume: 143, Issue: 3, Pages: 24 - 29

Swansea University Author: Rajesh Ransing Orcid Logo

Abstract

Steve Robinsons of American Foundrymen Society has once argued that foundries with 4% profit margin need to find new sales revenue of US$1 Million to generate US$40,000 operating profits. The case study presented in this paper highlights how an in-process quality improvement exercise resulted in ann...

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Published in: Foundry Management and Technology
Published: 2015
Online Access: http://foundrymag.com/energy-efficiency
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa24998
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Abstract: Steve Robinsons of American Foundrymen Society has once argued that foundries with 4% profit margin need to find new sales revenue of US$1 Million to generate US$40,000 operating profits. The case study presented in this paper highlights how an in-process quality improvement exercise resulted in annual saving of US$144,000 by studying in-process data in a melt room on 25 process inputs. Foundry is an energy intensive industry. Energy costs for foundries are around 15% of the cost of castings. In recent years foundries have become energy aware and many have installed energy meters with on-line energy monitoring systems to report energy consumption (kWh) per tonne, charge or furnace with varying sampling frequency. This paper highlights how 7 Steps of 7Epsilon were implemented and in-process data for a foundry was visualised using penalty matrices to discover energy saving opportunities. With ISO 9001:2015 on the horizon there is an urgent need to change the foundry culture - across the world - towards capturing, storing, reusing in-process data as well as organisational knowledge in order to demonstrate in-process quality improvement. The 7Epsilon approach offers a structured methodology for organizational knowledge management as well as in-process quality improvement.
Keywords: Energy optimisation, Melting process, Iron Foundry, Six Sigma, 7Epsilon, In-process Quality Improvement, Energy
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Issue: 3
Start Page: 24
End Page: 29