In May 2022, a leading automotive company initiated a pilot project with tooling digitalization experts, targeting production inefficiencies at two key suppliers. The focus was on High- Pressure Aluminum Die Casting(HPDC)—a process critical to their manufacturing but plagued by a high scrap rate and operational discrepancies.

In HPDC, insufficient monitoring of mold warm-up temperatures led to excessive scrap rates and elevated production costs and loss of production capacity. The core challenges included:

• Insufficient Tooling Data: This meant early signs of tooling wear and impending failures went undetected.

• Low Visibility: There was a significant gap in monitoring production in real-time, making it challenging to identify when operations deviated from set parameters.

• Root Cause Analysis: The lack of detailed operational visibility hindered the ability to effectively diagnose and address the underlying causes of inefficiencies.

To address these challenges, the automotive company relied on an advanced tooling digitalization solution, with specialized sensors that monitor the exterior temperature of tooling, effectively tracking warm-up times and temperature deviations, providing:

• Enhanced Tooling Efficiency Visibility: Real-time data on tooling performance helped pinpoint efficiency losses and potential improvements.

• Capacity and Quality Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of production capacity and part quality ensured deviations were caught and corrected swiftly, reducing the possibility of scrap.

• Data-Driven Insights: The integration of comprehensive tooling data analytics facilitated proactive maintenance and operational adjustments, reducing downtime and enhancing output quality.

Implementing the advanced tooling digitalization solution revealed that daily temperature fluctuations cost 5 minutes of production daily. Although these fluctuations accounted for only 0.3% of the production cycle, they produced 4,181 defective parts per tool annually, from 1,200,000 parts. Financially, this translated into a significant cost, with each defective part costing $5, cumulatively amounting to $20,906 lost per tool each year due to defective parts. Across 3,000 tools, this issue culminated in a combined annual loss of $62,718,000.

The pilot achieved substantial cost savings by curtailing waste and reinforced the value of real-time data monitoring in streamlining manufacturing processes.