What foundries make and how the work flows
A foundry turns a pattern or tool into molds, pours metal, then cleans, heat treats, inspects and often machines the casting. The routing looks different from a machine shop: melt and pour are batch operations, one heat feeds many jobs, and yield loss from scrap, gates and risers is a core cost driver.
That means the shop floor data that matters most is by heat, by pour and by mold, not just by work order. Traceability from chemistry results to the finished part is a basic customer expectation in most regulated programs.
Quoting and costing realities
Casting quotes depend on alloy, weight, pour yield, core and pattern costs, cleaning time, heat treat and inspection scope. Metal price swings and surcharges on scrap, alloys and energy often need to be passed through, so a quote built on last quarter's melt cost can lose money quickly.
Estimators commonly carry these formulas in spreadsheets. Moving them into the ERP, with revision control and a link to actual yields by part number, is where quote accuracy usually improves.
- Track actual yield by part number and feed it back into the next quote
- Keep alloy and energy surcharge rules as data, not in someone's head
- Separate pattern and tooling cost recovery from piece price
Try it here, free
Cast Iron and Steel Casting Grades ASTM Reference
Look up ASTM A48, A536, A27, A216, A351, A148 and A897 casting grades with minimum tensile and yield values in ksi and MPa.
ERP and systems seen in foundries
Foundries use a mix of general manufacturing ERPs and industry-specific tools. Products such as Infor SyteLine/CloudSuite Industrial, Epicor Kinetic, Global Shop Solutions and Plex appear in casting and metal shops, alongside furnace, spectrometer and sand-system data that often lives outside the ERP.
The recurring gaps are heat and lot traceability, scrap and rework reason coding, and tying lab chemistry results to production. Many plants close those gaps with inspection software or custom reports rather than replacing the ERP.
Where private AI helps and where it does not
Useful, bounded uses include natural-language questions over ERP data (scrap by part and shift, open heats, late customer orders), and retrieval over customer specs, material test reports and procedures so engineers find the right clause quickly. Running open-weight models on the plant's own servers keeps drawings and customer data inside the building.
AI does not replace metallurgical judgment or melt control, and a process controller or the vendor's own reports may be enough for simple dashboards. Any write-back to the ERP should require human approval.
Frequently asked questions
What is the American Foundry Society?
AFS is the US trade association for the metalcasting industry. It supports foundries, suppliers and casting buyers with technical committees, publications, training and events such as the Metalcasting Congress, and it is based in Schaumburg, Illinois.
What ERP do foundries use?
There is no single answer. Foundries use general manufacturing ERPs such as SyteLine/CloudSuite Industrial, Epicor Kinetic, Global Shop Solutions or Plex, often with separate lab, furnace or quality systems. Heat traceability and yield tracking are the features to test in any demo.
How do foundries track heat and lot traceability?
Most link a heat or pour number to chemistry and mechanical test results, then carry that lot through molding, cleaning, heat treat and machining. Whether this lives in the ERP or a quality system depends on the plant, but customers usually expect full traceability on certified work.
Can AI run on a foundry's own servers?
Yes. Open-weight models can be served on local GPUs so ERP records and customer drawings do not leave the plant network. It suits question answering and document retrieval well, but it should not be used to control melting or pouring.