Requirements checklist
What to ask for when choosing software for steel foundries.
A checklist built from how steel foundries work, to print or save as a PDF and bring to any supplier meeting.
What the software should cover
Tick each one that matters to your business.
- Pattern and core box register
- Melt and heat log
- Moulding and pouring schedule
- Fettling, repair and inspection
- Heat treatment charges
- Material test certificates
- Costing by heat and casting
Roles that need their own access
Who logs in, and what each person may see or change.
- For foundry owners
- For the melt shop lead
- For the pattern shop and moulding
- For quality and the lab
- For sales and dispatch
Reports to ask for
Ask to see each one with your own sample data.
- Heats poured by furnace and grade, with tonnes charged against tonnes shipped
- Castings by stage: moulded, shaken out, in fettling, in repair, in treatment
- Weld repair count and hours by casting and pattern
- Inspection rejections by defect type, such as hot tear, misrun or inclusion, and pattern
- Furnace loads with castings per cycle and order
- Open orders by promised date and customer
- Customer dues, oldest invoice first
Systems it may need to connect to
Note which ones you already run.
- Spectrometer readings by import
- WhatsApp or other messaging
- Accounting export
- Weighbridge entries
Questions for any vendor
Put these to every supplier you are comparing.
- Can a heat feed castings for several orders?
- Does it record weld repair?
- How are heat treatment loads handled?
- Can it link to our spectrometer?
- Who sets up the certificate format?
- What about outside processes such as machining?
- Can our pattern store be loaded?
- Who owns the heat and test records?
- What drives the cost?
- What happens when a casting is scrapped?
Where the work usually breaks today
Circle the ones you recognise. They set the order of the project.
- Heat numbers live on a whiteboard
- Charge mix is costed after the fact
- Weld repair is not counted
- Heat treatment charges mix orders
- Test coupons drift from their castings
Prefer to talk it through? See the steel foundries page.