Job Safety Analysis and Elimination of Casting Defects by Application of Design of Experiments

This paper studies and analyzes the safety aspects by identifying existing or potential job hazards in the workplace. The project was carried out in a public sector foundry industry. The objective of the project was to eliminate and prevent hazards at workplace and to increase the production and profit of the company by minimising casting defects. Accident history of the company was studied, it was found that burning injury during casting process has the highest rate of disabling injuries and illness and the main reason for the injuries was due to the defects in the mould. Pareto chart and cause effect diagram are effective tools for casting defect analysis. The design of experiments was used to analyze the sand related defects in green sand casting. The green sand related process parameters considered are, moisture content, green compression strength and permeability. For optimization of the process parameters, Taguchi based L9 orthogonal array was used for the experimental purpose and analysis was carried out using Minitab software.