ERP Software for Casting & Foundry
ERP for Casting and Foundry Industry

ERP software for the Casting and Foundry Industry

Casting and Foundry is a process of melting metal and casting it in molds to create parts such as engine components, machine cases, valves, and gears. All these processes use different types of casting methods like die-casting, investment casting, and sand casting.

Modern foundries work with sophisticated, mechanized equipment that melts metals in furnaces of a few kilograms to several tons. After the molten metal is cast into moulds, it solidifies into the desired form when cooled. Finishing operations make these castings ready for production and up to standards of quality.

Managing such complex workflows from raw material procurement (like pig iron, aluminum, epoxy, or clay) to melting, molding, cooling, and last stage finishing needs more than a manual tracking. It needs a smart ERP solution specifically designed for the Casting & Foundry industry.

Lighthouse ERP for Casting and Foundry Industry is designed to digitize and automate the entire production lifecycle. It streamlines operations, improves traceability, and ensures accurate material resource planning. Built with flexibility and scalability, it adapts to your foundry’s unique processes, making it an essential tool in today's competitive and tech-driven manufacturing environment.

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Challenges of Casting & Foundry Industry

Challenges Managing Raw Material

Managing Raw Material Variants like Pig Iron, Scrap & Alloys

Managing diverse raw materials like pig iron, scrap, and alloys needs precise control and accurate ratios which can be achieved with Foundry ERP Software.

Challenges Heat-Wise Traceability

Lot-Wise and Heat-Wise Traceability

Ensuring backward and forward traceability of batches based on heat number, mold number, or furnace cycle is critical for defect analysis, recalls, and quality audits.

Challenges Manual Dependency

Manual Dependency in Furnace Monitoring & Pouring Control

Even with mechanization, many foundries still face challenges in monitoring furnace parameters like temperature, timing, and metal flow rate, affecting casting consistency.

Challenges Wastage During Mold

Wastage During Mold Preparation and Pouring

Sand, epoxy, and clay molds often result in high material wastage due to errors in preparation, humidity control, or pour timing increasing costs and reducing yield.

Challenges Limited Visibility

Limited Visibility Across Plant Floor and Inventory Movement

Movements of molten metal, molds, semi-finished castings, and finished parts between yard, weighbridge, furnace, and lab are very specific to foundry layout.

Challenges Difficulty in Real-Time

Difficulty in Real-Time Scrap Accounting

Movements of molten metal, molds, semi-finished castings, and finished parts between yard, weighbridge, furnace, and lab are very specific to foundry layout.

Challenges Difficulty in Real-Time

Frequent Breakdown of Crucial Equipment Without Maintenance Alerts

Melting furnaces and mold handling systems face frequent wear and tear, and lack of predictive maintenance leads to unscheduled downtime and production loss.

Benefits of ERP for Casting & Foundry Industry

Benefit Smarter material planning

Smarter material planning & Alloy Composition Management

Foundry metal control handles multiple raw material grades like pig iron, scrap, aluminium, and tracks heat-wise combinations, minimizing wastage and rejections.

Benefit Furnace Monitoring

Furnace Monitoring & Pouring Analytics

With metal pour control software, monitor furnace temperature, pour cycles, and metal fluidity helping avoid defective casting due to improper pouring.

Benefit Mould Inventory

Mould Inventory & Usage Optimization

ERP for sand casting tracks mould usage, lifecycle, and material like epoxy or clay, helping reduce repeated rework and mould- related scrap.

Benefit Yard-to-Lab Movement

Yard-to-Lab Movement Visibility

ERP for foundry integrates yard logistics, weighbridge, furnace, and quality lab, ensuring clear visibility of casting and metal batches across plant units.

Benefit Recovery Analytics

Scrap Recording & Recovery Analytics

Captures real-time data on sprue, runner, and excess metal, helping calculate net yield and improving scrap-to-finish ratio.

Benefit Equipment Downtime

Equipment Downtime Logging & Maintenance Alerts

Foundry ERP includes preventive maintenance for ladles, crucibles, moulding machines, reducing unexpected downtimes and improving asset life.

Benefit part-Wise Costing Accuracy

Jobwise and Part-Wise Costing Accuracy

Cost calculations are linked to mould type, alloy used, time taken, and labour hours, ensuring accurate job casting for each casting.

Key modules in Foundry and Casting ERP software

ERP for Casting foundry
  • Inventory Management

    Inventory Management allows the company to easily keep the track of inventory of raw material to finished goods along with the quality status of produced goods helping in managing the inventory costs effectively.

  • Procurement Management

    Procurement Management lets the company monitor all the raw material purchased along with other necessary material like store consumable, which is required for working of industry.

  • Sales & Dispatch Management

    Sales & Dispatch Management module allows the company to track all the orders and shipments (under process and out for delivery) based on the details of delivery orders. Timely Reporting through emails/ SMS for better customer service

  • The Plant Management

    The Plant Management module facilitates the management workers and team to assimilate the problems in the plant and mitigate all the problems that occur during the plant maintenance.

  • Finance Management

    Finance Management helps the company manage its finances and accounts rendering them the complete understanding of the budget and costing of production along with operations profitability

  • Quality Control and Calibration Management

    Quality Control and Calibration Management helps the team to know the quality of the production, leading the production team to track defects (casting rejections and machining rejections) and undertake improvements in the flawed products as necessary. It also helps in inspection of any re-working based on casting inspection, machining inspection or die inspection.

Features of Lighthouse ERP for Casting and Founding Industry

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Integrated Departmental Communication

Lighthouse ERP connects all critical departments procurement, production, furnace, mold room, quality, and dispatch creating a unified digital workflow and eliminating data silos.

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Process-Specific Automation

Automates key casting processes such as melting, pouring, mold tracking, and cooling schedules, reducing manual errors and speeding up production cycles.

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Heat Number and Batch-Wise Traceability

Every metal melt and casting batch is traceable through assigned heat numbers, lot IDs, and pour details, improving quality control and accountability.

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Raw Material and Scrap Management

Handles complex inventory like pig iron, aluminum, scrap, epoxy, clay, and tracks sprue, runner, and excess metal for accurate material planning and scrap reuse.

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Real-Time Production Monitoring

Tracks each stage of casting from furnace temperature, pour timings, to mold curing enabling floor supervisors to react immediately to process deviations.

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Predictive Maintenance for Foundry Equipment

Schedules maintenance alerts for furnaces, ladles, die-casting machines, and crucibles, reducing downtime and increasing machinery life.

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Advanced Analytics & Decision Support

In-built analytics engine processes data from casting operations and provides actionable insights for process optimization, cost control, and quality improvements.

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Quality Control and Defect Tracking Module

Captures inspection data, connects it with casting parameters, and helps in reducing casting defects like shrinkage or porosity.

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Job Work and Costing Management

Calculates casting-wise costing by factoring in raw material, labor, machine hours, and energy used, supporting more accurate quotations and profitability analysis.