Simplifying Heat Treating with Odyssey ERP
By Kevin Carlson, Senior Business Consultant
Heat treating can be tricky, with multiple shifts, cycles, and certifications to manage. Having the right ERP system in place, however, can simplify the process and help your team manage every step with confidence.
The heat treating process for foundries is an essential step in reaching the required physical properties for castings. This is especially important when providing certifications for lot-tracked or serialized castings. Beyond compliance, a well-managed heat treat process can reduce errors, control costs, and improve customer confidence.
Heat treatment operations can also be a significant cost driver, so it’s critical to include them in the products’ labor routings. By doing so, metalcasters gain better visibility into true product costs and avoid unpleasant surprises in quoting or margin analysis.
Seamless Scheduling Across Shifts
The scheduling and reporting of heat treating is different from other operations. Depending on the time and temperature requirements, it is not uncommon for one employee or crew to start a heat treat cycle and another to finish it. This requires a unique method for starting and stopping the job.
For most operations, an employee cannot clock out of work while jobbed in. This process is different for heat treating, since, to quote from old late-night infomercials, the when the process starts, it is typically “set it, and forget it,” until the next shift comes in. Odyssey ERP’s software adapts to this reality, reducing workarounds and making it easier to keep production flowing smoothly across shifts.
Heat Treat Batching Made Easy
For scheduling and costing purposes, the heat treat ovens should be set up as the operations. But, since there are various processes, there needs to be a way of determining the specific requirements for each product. In Odyssey, this is made easier through a master table for heat treat cycles. Once defined, these can be assigned to the heat treat routing sequence in a product’s routing. For each cycle, time, temperatures, and the quenching process can be defined. This ensures consistency, traceability, and faster setup when similar jobs repeat.
The heat treat batching process allows you to label a batch, assign the cycle and other details, and then add the products to be processed to the batch. This can be a few castings or thousands, depending on the size of the oven. It can be specific serial numbers, lots, or any other castings that need heat treating. This batching flexibility helps maximize oven utilization and reduce per-part costs.
Tracking and Certification for Customer Confidence
With a Shop Floor Manager profile set up, production for castings in the batch can be created once the batch is completed. All related information is automatically attached to the product tracking numbers for inclusion on the certification. That means less manual effort for staff and more accurate records for customers.
If you’d like to see the heat treat batch process in more detail, reach out to our team. We’d be happy to share more information.
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