The goal of concurrent engineering is naturally a rise in quality and profits. The methods to achieve this are e.g.

• removing the useless activities, e.g. multiple inspections
• minimising lead time
• minimising scrap rate

Useless activities can be removed, if there is enough trust between the parties. Quality control can be set to minimum when right quality is achieved and the process is in control.

Decreased lead time is perhaps the greatest benefit of concurrent engineering. The lead time of castings has typically been months. This is understandable, as the design process involves many phases, like

• initial design of the component
• assessment of the feasibility of casting the component
• assessment of the quality requirements
• designing of the risering and gating
• patternmaking
• test casting the component
• proposal to change the design for better castability
• changes to the design of the component/ to the risering
• final test castings
• production
• final inspection
• inspection by the customer

CastCHECK can be used at areas marked with bold. Solidification simulation, e.g. with CastCAE, is typically used in areas that are marked with italic. With electronic data transfer- and the customer using CastCHECK and the foundry using simulation program- the designing stage can be reduced to just a fraction of what it used to be. Several consultations can be made in just one day, instead of first sending the drawings by mail and then organising meetings between the parties to discuss the solutions. Both parties can point out the problems through the simulation results, which are easy to interpret.

When the customer actively participates in increasing the castability of the component, the quality will also rise to a higher level.

This means that the foundry will be able to meet the delivery times and the scrap rate will drop. This in its turn means that the number of the castings delivered will correspond to that of the order. Just in Time- deliveries become a possibility.

It is fairly obvious what can be achieved with a marked decrease in lead time.

The scrap rate will naturally decrease through increase in castability. Increased castability means that the difficult shapes- which may be OK on a good day, but another day may see them become defective- have been avoided. Quality can be kept at a constant level, where small variations in the process parameters of the foundry do not affect the result. In addition, the yield will be better through better castability and it will decrease the cost.

Right Quality

In most cases the foundry is forced to make test castings of the component, to ensure that the quality meets the customer's requirements. This is very expensive, and it will be even more expensive, should the method be inadequate. Even foundries with simulation systems face situations, where all of the defects cannot be removed or will be extremely difficult to avoid. In these situations the foundry has to ask the customer, whether they want to get defect-free castings at a high price or whether some defects are allowed at some locations, resulting in much lower price. This knowledge should be available beforehand to speed up the design process. If the components are checked with CastCHECK, the results can be analysed by the foundry engineers. They will be able to assess the outcome fairly easily, based on these results.

When the customer receives castings from the foundries, there is always a possibility that all of them do not meet the requirements. Depending on the level of co-operation, an inspection will or will not be made. If it is done, the areas to inspect need to be defined. Because inspection is time-consuming and expensive- especially if the components need to be ultrasonic tested or X-ray-inspected- you save time and money if you can inspect, say, only one area, instead of the whole component. CastCHECK can help the designer to determine these areas. CastCHECK shows the problem areas, and if the foundry uses CastCAE simulation, the designer can ask the foundry to give the simulation results from the castings, which then can be viewed with CastCHECK. Then the designer can easily see which problems the foundry has been able to resolve and which are still left. The areas which should be inspected, are: the areas of the highest loads the areas where defects are most likely to occur the areas of high integrity requirements

Fig. 5. Left: A crankshaft analysed with CastCHECK, showing predicted problems (without risers and process information). Right: The same crankshaft, simulated with CastCAE, showing defect and porosity formation (with process parameters and risering). The correspondence of the defect prediction is highlighted.

Business relations work in different ways. Foundries can work as sub-contractors to the metal industry, as business partners with their customers, or anything in between. The higher the level of co-operation, the lower the production costs will be. This, however, requires complete openness about the real costs and profit margins, in addition to information about any quality or production problems that might occur.Higher level of co-operation is required and suggested, when customer makes a considerable part of the foundry's production, or the foundry produces most of the customer's castings. In other words, when the parties depend on each other.

Only by raising the level of co-operation, it is possible to reduce the lead time and production costs considerably.

The development in data transfer (networks) has increased the possibilities to speed up design process greatly, even when the business parties are physically distant. This also means that competition is fierce, vicinity does not mean an advantage anymore.This gives the advantage to those, who can react fast to the customer's needs, while still managing to keep the quality high.

The co-operation requires effective tools. The use of networks enables the designer of the machine shop to co-operate with the foundry engineers by sending data- like 3D-models, drawings or analysis results- and getting e.g. simulation results in return. Iterative on-line design process is reality today, not just a futuristic possibility.

CastCHECK is a tool for designers. It not only helps to spot the possible problems, but it can also receive and show the results of the foundry simulations made with CastCAE.

STL-format, which is the format that CastCHECK reads, can also be used to transfer the CAD-geometry to the foundry. Most simulation programs read STL, which means that the foundry does not need to create a new model for simulation purposes, but it can use the geometry from the customer. Again, this reduces the work needed to achieve the final product. Some CAD-programs, like form•Z, even read STL-format and so the foundry can start designing the risering from the geometry created and delivered by the customer, no matter which CAD-system they have used.