Re-engineering the roto-casting mould making process

The mould making process for rotational (roto-) casting products involves manufacturing operations ranging from transforming customers’ specification into artistic and functional design, right through to final mould cavity polishing. The current manual mould making process is labour intensive and very expensive. To reduce the manufacturing cost and to reduce the process lead-time, the industry should review its manufacturing processes and should identify the areas that need streamlining and automating. Pareto analysis can be applied to identify key elements of the pre-production activities as these occupy a significant part of the lead-time. Manufacturers frequently resort to alternative design and prototyping methods, such as computer-aided design and rapid prototyping. This article will discuss the re-engineering of some processes in the mould making industry for roto-casting manufacturing of plastic toys, leading to reduction in lead-time and cost thereby improving its competitiveness. The suggested approach is validated through a breakeven analysis based on an estimation of the net present values associated with the traditional and the proposed approaches.