How does having multiple facilities help us cast more ductile iron?

By C.A. Lawton | December 12, 2022

At The C.A. Lawton Co., we recognize that the need for ductile iron is growing. In a recent interview, president Barry Adamski, explains how having multiple facilities helps Lawton Standard cast more ductile iron than before. Barry explains how the foundries learn from each other, experiment, and benefit from the flexibility remote engineers afford.

Our foundries learn from each location

Each site that joins The Lawton Standard family, brings with them a unique skill set and set of physical capabilities that they’re particularly great in. We learn from each location, taking the best processes from each. Inevitably we will reconcile our processes site to site. As we see how each location performs some tasks better than others, we recognize that some of our locations’ production will be more gray iron tilted; some might be more ductile. Because of the power of The Lawton Standard family, we’re able to deploy the resources each operation needs.

We experiment

Because of our increase in capacity, The Lawton Standard family of foundries now has the freedom to try different things at different locations to see what works best. We’ve seen this already; we are already conducting experiments.

Barry gives an example, “We can try a whole bunch of chills in a certain location at one place and try something else at another. And we can do some of these experiments and learn and then transfer, cross-pollinate, some of that. It’s happening and it seems to be accelerating.”

We have flexible engineering teams

One of the biggest benefits of The Lawton Standard family of companies is our full bench of engineers, many of which can work remotely, saving us all time and money. Lawton Standard has asynchronous teams that can work from home, and then they can go to various sites as needed. For example, they can go where we’re doing the experiments we mentioned.

Barry tells us, with all this flexibility, ductile production is possible for the long term. Be sure to follow us on your favorite social networks and subscribe to our YouTube channel for updates on ductile iron.