Doubled Demand at Lodge Cast Iron Triggers Capital Investments

Demand for products made by cookware specialist Lodge Cast Iron has doubled in the last two years, prompting the foundry to expand its molding capacity by 30% with new equipment that will push its yearly output at two South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, facilities from 70 million lbs. to 100 million. 

The foundry bought the first DISAMATIC D5 molding machine in the U.S and will install DISA’s full Monitizer digital solution, including the Artificial-Intelligence-driven Monitizer | PRESCRIBE––the latter is scheduled to be running by next spring. 

“At Lodge, we face two classic foundry challenges: thin-walled castings and a premium surface finish,” said Dave Magness, senior vice president of Operation at Lodge Cast Iron. “Added to that, we’re extremely picky about which castings get through and which we call scrap. We’re very excited about Monitizer | PRESCRIBE’s ability to help us better understand all our operating inputs and its potential to increase our uptime and reduce our scrap.”

Across all its lines, Lodge will deploy Monitizer | CIM to enhance process automation and recipe management, along with Monitizer | GLOBAL for data collection, data visualization, real-time monitoring and alerting. The foundry will initially run a single-line pilot of the AI-driven Monitizer | PRESCRIBE tool to optimize its process and casting quality.