SANDMAN - The Green Sand Control, Optimization and Process Reliability Web based Solution for foundries to
increase profits by reducing casting Rejections - Personalized, using the foundry's own data and green
sand preparation parameters.
Green sand control and it's importance in modern day foundries costs
In these times of fast changing economic scenarios, business eco systems & the resultant increasing pressure on
business sustainability, castings rejections and their control in green sand foundries assume a huge dimension of
cost and potential saving. By a back-of-the-envelop calculation the cost of a 1% green sand rejection
(averaged over all products and provided for salvaged castings) in a 2000 ton/month foundry, in India, is approx.:
1.2 (INR 12 million) to 1.5 crores (INR 15 Million) per annum.
The Problem
Times have changed and there is an increasing gap between experience and skilled manpower to manage the green sand
molding process which has always been known as an 'art'. The element of the human interface in this process
management is becoming increasing limited as the process grows faster, more exact and increasingly dependent on fast
depleting, standardization resistant, natural resources like silica sand and bentonite. As people age, change, move
on, the legacy of the experience and knowledge of the foundry sand process and management is often lost or available
only in limited spots to the succeeding controllers. Foundry sand and related rejection Data is often recorded in
non standard formats making even the single dimensional data retrieval and analytical capabilities, difficult. Data
is often just a collection of thousands and millions of points which beg to be made meaningful as they are the
treasure trove of the foundry analytics for profit if processed properly. As the data points become huge, even the
most experienced sand manager cannot be expected to keep an all encompassing perspective of precise experience over
a huge process-variable scenario. To add to this process limiting situation, is the mushrooming of clones or
claimants of competitive products which are difficult for an average foundry to verify and control efficiently and
effectively. Validation is almost always at the cost of the foundry. Serious costs can occur because the effects are
felt in the long term and correction logic is often mired in the variables of the interim duration of the change. It
hurts the foundry, immensely. There is therefore a huge un-met need for a discerning foundryman who is aware of the
times and the fast changing eco system he is mandated to usher his foundry into.
The Solution
SANDMAN is a unique world-class software service conceived, created and developed by Mr. Deepak Chowdhary, founder
owner of MPM Private Limited which, for the first time in the world, offers a software based solution which enables
foundries to store, view and use advanced and powerful mathematical modeling to interpolate, analyze and process
huge data over time periods which are limited only by their own capacity to enter their data. In doing so, the power
of multi-parameter analysis enables the foundry to not only detect and analyse the deviant and/or aberrant process
parameters of the green sand as a whole, over any specified time period within the own data of the foundry, but also
gives the power of predictive analysis on the various rejection incidences vis-a-vis green sand parameters. This
allows the foundry to take timely corrective actions to bring about process consistency and enable correction and
most importantly, prevention of process inconsistent parameters which lead to the relevant casting defect/s being
analyzed. The software also allows the foundry to run various 'what-if' scenarios and get predictions from the
system with a confidence factor that results from the mathematical analysis of the historical data of the sand
system. This web based service which does not require any capex in hardware, is available through unique ID and
Password which enables the Foundry to access their sand related information 24/7 from their own location without any
time lag.