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DISA partners with Chinese metal casting company Huaxiang to address digitisation of the foundry industry

DISA extended their decades-long partnership with a Chinese metal foundry, Shanxi Huaxiang Group, and powered them with DISA TAG, the world leading innovative digital product. They marked a coorpertion milestone and signed at the 2021 Asia Foundry Development and Cooperation Summit last week. The two parties are working towards the common goal for addressing the intelligence and digitisation of the foundry industry,  and continue to promote the high-quality development. 

Wei Baohua, Senior Vice President of Norican Group,Asia Pacific, Song Jianhui, Shanxi Huaxiang Group Co., Ltd. and Yu Jian, Vice President of OEM sales of DISA ,Asia Pacific attended the signing ceremony.

DISA and Huaxiang, bringing the decades-long partnershipto a elevated level

The partnership between DISA and Huaxiang dates back to 21 years ago. Huaxiang purchased its first DISA equipment in 2000, and now there are nine DISA molding lines in operation at Huaxiang's factories. Today, the partnership between Huaxiang and DISA enters a new, digital era.

 In early 2020, Huaxiang became a pioneer in foundry digitisation and embraced artificial intelligence solutions by choosing DISA's full range of Monitizer® digital tools. With Monitizer | DISCOVER, Huaxiang was able to collect and monitor real-time process data, while the AI-enabled Monitizer | PRESCRIBE allowed it to optimize casting quality, in real time.

Huaxiang further its cooperation with DISA in 2021 and now become the first foundry in Asia Pacific to use DISA TAG. DISA will cotinue to support Huaxiang’s digital transformation, helping it maximize capacity utilization, improve efficiency, reduce scrap and optimize quality. Focus on the automation and environmental requirements for its digital solutions, DISA is dedicated to promoting the sustainable development of the foundry industry.

DISA TAG

DISA TAG is a unique tool for casting traceability. Foundries can gain full traceability with DISA’s ingenious new Trace and Guidance (TAG) concept. TAG adds a unique ID number to each casting to provide the missing link between individual castings quality and their process data like sand compressibility, shot pressure and pouring temperature.

Since then, every Huaxiang casting product will have a unique ID– DISA TAG

Through marking, reading and analysing, DISA TAG enables

  • full casting traceability which can trace back to when and how the casting was produced

  • discovering the root cause of scrap through data mining

  • making full use of data to unlock the possibilities of machine-learning AI algorithms

  • optimizing quality and reducing wastes and production costs

TAG provides the missing link in the casting process.

The forward-looking digital solution - Monitizer

Installing DISA's Monitizer | CIM and Norigate IIoT gateway is the first step in this digitisation journey. It enables the digitisation of Huaxiang's equipment by collecting, timestamping and encrypting stored data, and allowing inter-device communication to automate and synchronize sub-processes such as molding and pouring. Moreover, the cloud-based processing and data storage of Monitizer | DISCOVER enables remote monitoring and alerting across multiple production lines and sites. Real-time data is presented in easy-to-understand, customised dashboards with custom metrics so as to accelerate error detection and simplify site performance comparisons.

Monitizer | PRESCRIBE will then maximize the value of Huaxiang's data by harnessing AI-driven predictive modeling to encrypt real-time data from the entire casting process on the cloud platform. This means that the Industry 4.0 Expert Execution System (EES) can calculate the optimal equipment settings to avoid defects in every process situation. With the support of other Monitizer components, Monitizer | PRESCRIBE delivers dynamic, real-time process control across Huaxiang's entire line, helping it produce the highest quality castings.

Shanxi Huaxiang Group was formerly known as Shanxi Huaxiang Group Co. (Huaxiang Limited), with a registered capital of Rmb36,300,000 upon its establishment. The company was reorganized as a joint-stock company on 30 June 2017, and received approval from China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) (filing No. [2020] 1841) to issue 53,200,000 A-share common stock through an IPO on 2 September 2020, adding 53,200,000 shares to its share capital. The firm was listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange on September 17 (603112 :SSE). Huaxiang is a large equipment manufacturing enterprise employing more than 4,000 staff. Headquartered in Linfen (Shanxi Province), the group has established production and R&D bases in Hubei and Guangdong, which enabled it to cover northern, central and southern China. It now operates an extensive business network across China and in overseas markets. Guided by the value of "professionalism and concentration", Huaxiang has been committed to improving product quality and customer experience over the past 20 years. It offers products primarily for white home appliances, construction machinery and automobile industries. Through continuous exploration along the value chain and enhancing the added value of its products, Huaxiang has become the leader in many niche markets and the rule-maker of the industry. Backed by the proven DISA vertical parting, horizontal parting, vacuum negative pressure molding (V method), resin sand and other casting technologies and precision machining process, Huaxiang is a major supplier for a series of globally leading companies, including Danfoss, Embraco, Midea, Gree, Taiwan Ruiji, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Continental Automotive, TRW, Southern Trina, Valeo; Toyota, Linde, Terex, Haulotte, JcbKalmar, Doosan, etc.

"DISA has been an core partner for Huaxiang in our journey over the past two decades. Our close cooperation has borne fruitful results," said Wang Yuan, President of Shanxi Huaxiang Group. "In the future, I believe DISA will continue to help Huaxiang improve product quality and operation efficiency. We will deepen our strategic, win-win partnership, joining hands to promote the transformation and high-quality growth of the industry. "

Huaxiang Group offers metal material moulding and machining for customers in the smart home, clean energy, automobile and industrial equipment industries on the back of a global sales network. In 2020, Huaxiang produced 177,100 tons of precision castings and 168 million pieces of machining products. Huaxiang have established a long-term, close cooperation with DISA, with the common goal of improving the production process and enhancing competitiveness through digital technologies. DISA helped Huaxiang achieve the sales goal of Rmb10 billion. Image D_Huaxiang

"Private foundries like Huaxiang plays a vital role in the upgrading of the global manufacturing sector," said Wei Baohua, Asia Pacific Senior Vice President of Norican Group. "I believe the mutual-beneficial partnership between Huaxiang and DISA will further deepen in future, while other foundries in the Asia Pacific region will also benefit from DISA's digital solutions. Looking ahead, we will continue to serve and win together with our customers by providing more innovative solutions. "