Tie each heat, pour and casting to its pattern, test result and customer order, from melt to dispatch.

Casting trades share a hot, heavy sequence. Metal is melted to a chemistry, poured into a mould, cooled, knocked out, fettled and inspected before it is released against a customer order. Iron and steel foundries pour into sand moulds. Investment casting companies build wax patterns and ceramic shells. Aluminium die casting and gravity die casting companies fill steel dies, with pressure or by gravity alone, and trim the flash before the part is checked.

The record that matters most is the heat. A furnace charge has a chemistry, a pouring temperature and a list of castings poured from it, with the operator and shift noted. Spectrometer readings, tensile bars, hardness checks and radiography reports all belong to that heat, so when a casting is questioned later the heat number is the way back.

Tooling is the second thread. Sand foundries hold wooden or metal patterns and core boxes, and die casters hold dies with shot counts and repair histories. Foundry component manufacturers often machine what they cast, so the part has to carry its identity from the pour to the finished dimension.