Exploring Sustainability Operational Excellence and Eco Friendly Environment through Six Sigma in Foundries

Abstract

The major problems being faced by Agra foundries are restrictions on emission levels and limits of energy consumption as lay down by CPCB and TERI, due to which majority of ferrous foundries using coal fired cupola have been closed by an order of the Hon ble Supreme court of India. Lot of research has been done by other researchers on the use of Rotary Furnace as a good alternative. Results obtained using LDO blended with bio-fuel gave good result but still energy consumption and pollutants were not within limits. We have designed, fabricated and installed a modified Compact heat exchanger, a special refractory lining and a new energy efficient burner. Lot of experiments has been conducted to optimize the various furnace parameters. The effect of additionally supplied oxygen externally has also been presented along with experimental results graphically. Good quality castings at much lesser cost have been produced. newlineThe productivity level is affected due to higher rejection rate of castings from rotary furnace. Hence for improving the productivity levels there exist a need of inventing new business improvement strategies and better tools/techniques for enhancing productivity levels and one such technique is six sigma. A case study has been carried out in a renowned foundry of Agra, where DMAIC based six sigma approach has been used to improve the casting process of manufacturing cylinder blocks to make it more robust to quality variations. ANOVA is applied for analyzing the effect of selected parameters and their levels on casting defects. The optimized parameters are considered to perform the practical run for Cylinder block castings. Percentage errors of empirical models and experimental results are compared with results from ANN and regression model. DMAIC methodology is successfully implemented to increase the sigma level. Defects analysis is also performed indicating lot of cost saving and improvement in the sigma level. So, the present research work dwells on exploring the synergy of Six Sigma and use of rotary furnace in foundry industry and analyzing its possible strategic impacts. newlineor the foundry industry for the country. newline newline