NORICAN-DISA

Reducing casting defects digitally: Al slashes iron foundry’s scrap by 50% - One of the largest in the southern hemisphere, this South African-based foundry has an annual melting capacity of 110,000 tonnes and produces over 75,000 tonnes of high-quality cast iron automotive components every year.

Source: Norican-Disa

Back in 2017, scrap, rework and shipping castings with subsurface defects were costing the foundry dearly. Although it invested in Industry 4.0 systems, the operations team found that optimising its entire casting process was too complex for manual analytics.

Instead, it turned to artificial intelligence (AI) and deployed the Monitizer | PRESCRIBE application. Monitizer | PRESCRIBE is the product of Norican Group’s partnership with DataProphet. Combining Norican’s deep foundry experience with DataProphet’s award-winning expertise in manufacturing artificial intelligence and data science, this packaged service quickly delivers insight that significantly improves foundry performance over both the short and – as the system keeps learning and improving the process – the long term.

Deploying Monitizer | PRESCRIBE gave the foundry full control over process optimisation, with real-time machine settings that helped cut defects by 50% in the first month of deployment, pushing defect rates in shipped castings close to zero after just three months and saving the foundry over $100k every month.

Source: Norican-Disa