Floppy Disks, not Rocks:
What it will take to get buyers, engineers, and other specifiers to use more castings

by Joe Scarry

I'll be frank: I didn't start looking into this problem with a totally open mind. When I was preparing our presentation for the AFS Congress in Dallas, E-Commerce in the Foundry Industry, I needed some quick facts to back up a key assertion -- that buyers of castings want to be able to easily move tools and patterns between foundries to suit their shifting needs. (In other words, that they want "interoperability.") So I dug into an in-depth research study by AFS: "Market Opportunity Study for the Metalcasting Industry." What I found surprised me.

(But before detailing the results, let me say that the AFS study is an outstanding piece of research. No one who is marketing castings should fail to own this study and become intimately familiar with every nook and cranny of it. You can buy it online from the AFS e-store.)

Here's what I found out about buyers/specifiers and their attitude toward castings and tooling from the AFS study:

(2) The tooling is the problem -- The NUMBER ONE reason for not converting parts to castings is cost, SPECIFICALLY the cost relating to patterns and toolings: "set up cost, pattern cost, tooling cost, die cost and mold cost."

(3) Tooling is a mystery -- The NUMBER ONE request by buyers/specifiers is more/better information about the "cost/quantity relationship -- cost effectiveness vs. low volume, and information about tooling."

(FYI, "marketing -- advertising, promotion, sales reps" is way down at #7 on their list of requests, and "information about selection criteria - casting type and material used" is #10!)

The report contains an extensive section of verbatim comments from respondents, and the impression they deliver is overwhelming: over and over and over, the people who control the decision about using castings say "quantities for us are too small to justify up-front costs (designs, patterns, etc.)."

The conclusion I drew from this: buyers/specifiers DON'T care about "interoperability" -- because they're not even AWARE of the benefits that patterns/tooling and the casting process can deliver in that area. They're still hung up on what a BURDEN tooling is!

In other words, patterns/tooling are viewed by castings buyers as a "rock around their neck." We need to do whatever it takes to get them to see that patterns/tooling are not a burden -- they are the thing that gives buyers/specifiers (and their supply chain partners) FREEDOM -- freedom and flexibility!

Here's an analogy from the computer industry: Patterns/tooling are the FLOPPY DISKS of the entire metal industry!

When buyers/specifiers start to focus on the freedom and flexibility they get from patterns & tooling, the metalcasting industry will enjoy the kind of growth that the computer industry began to enjoy when computer users began to appreciate how convenient it is to use a floppy disk!

• To see how all of this fits into the bigger picture, take a look at our slide presentation: E-Commerce in the Foundry Industry.
  
  
• Click here to read an in-depth explanation of other key ideas in the slide presentation.