Beyond Six Sigma to 7Epsilon

7Epsilon focuses on applying foundry- and product-specific process knowledge and in-process data for continual process improvement.

Metalcasting is energy intensive, with energy costs for foundries representing around 15% of the cost of castings. In their article, Seven Steps to Energy Efficiency for Foundries, S.H. Arjunwadkar, Dr. M.R. Ransing, and Dr. R.S. Ransing detailed how the 7Epsilon process was implemented and in-process data for a foundry was visualized using penalty matrices, to discover the energy-saving opportunities that are available but invisible to the operators.

They write: “With ISO 9001:2015 on the horizon there is an urgent need to change the foundry culture - across the world - toward capturing, storing, reusing in-process data as well as organizational knowledge, in order to demonstrate in-process quality improvement. The 7Epsilon approach offers a structured methodology for organizational knowledge management as well as in-process quality improvement.”