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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of lean and green practices to foundry industry in India for improving productivity and eliminating waste, incorporating the sustainability into business performance measures.

The study used survey questionnaire method to collect data against 16 lean and green practices from 71 middle- to senior-level professionals belonging to Indian foundry industry. The survey instrument of lean and green practices was developed based on a number of sources from the literature and formal discussions with academicians and foundry industry professionals. The responses were received on a five-point Likert scale ranging from least applicable to most applicable. Exploratory factor and reliability analyses are conducted to obtain and validate constructs and measure each constructs Cronbach’s α (i.e. a consistency coefficient). The lean and green practices are categorized into the four constructs, namely, workplace organization practices, management practices, inventory control practices, and industrial manufacturing and quality improvement practices. Further, descriptive statistics is employed to find out the relative significance of lean and green practices.

Factor and reliability analyses show that all four constructs are adequate and reliable to illustrate lean and green practices. Descriptive statistics indicates that lean and green practices are applicable for implementation to a certain extent in the foundry industry. Correlation analysis shows that lean practices are positively and moderately interrelated with green practices. Thus, the results present a strong evidence that lean and green practices are moderately applicable for implementation in the foundry industry.

The paper provides insights into the applicability of lean and green practices implementation in the context of a developing country and presents evidence that lean and green practices are moderately applicable in the foundry industry. In addition, this paper is one of the few efforts to promote sustainable development within the industry.

The purpose of the paper is to illustrate application of the cleaner production concept so as to incorporate environmental protection into business performance. The study analyses areas pertaining to the foundry industry that impact negatively on the environment leading to unsustainable resource utilisation and suggests options for promoting sustainable development within the industry, with specific focus on a foundry in a lower income country (LIC).

Data were collected using the cleaner production (CP) Methodology. Pre‐assessment and assessment was carried out and options generated. The options included both low cost and capital intensive approaches.

The paper finds that the CP approach adopted provides clear guidance for generating options and can be used as a practical basis for managerial decision making and policy formulation. Of major concern is resource depletion and pollution associated with the foundry processes. Used resin sand contains toxic chemicals cause leaching and as such, reclamation of resin sand is suggested. There is need for low income countries (LIC's) to identify the best available technologies (BAT's) that are available within the foundry industry and take these aboard or better still improve on them.

This research developed environmental options that can be applied in the foundry industry. However, it can be said that the findings may have limited global application since the analysis was carried out at one Foundry Company.

The paper focuses on a single foundry factory, since the case study approach was used. As such, environmental indicators and options may vary, since the processes from one foundry to another are bound to differ.

This paper is an attempt at combining theoretical and practical ideas to cover the scope of sustainable manufacturing in the setting of a developing country with a view to identify the lessons that can be learnt and to identify the points of departure when compared with studies done elsewhere. The work informs cleaner production assessment at any level, with a focus of production experiences in the foundry industry in a lower technology, developing economy that is less industrialized. The paper establishes a framework of options that can be applied in the foundry industry and other pollution‐intensive industries.

This paper considers the following issues for developing an industry manpower strategy: an idea of the national system that exists for implementing a manpower strategy, the main questions arising from the strategy, and a definition of manpower planning; from this, the information and analysis techniques used to identify the strategy are derived. The first application produces a manpower picture of the foundry industry. For company manpower planning the paper describes a manpower model of a company, and how the relationship between the activity and employment patterns of foundries was investigated. The industry findings are verified by company manpower planning investigations using the same information and techniques. The conclusions discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of using this approach.

The UK cast iron foundry industry is surveyed in terms of past performance, present situation and future trends. The traditional “feast or famine” image is discussed in terms of the actions required to improve quality, customer relationships and performance. The article highlights these relationships through its markets, business performance, process route and techological developments that support a new, streamlined, cost‐effective and efficient foundry industry of the 1990s.

Foundry, Design House, and integrated device manufacturers (IDM) are major characters in the semiconductor industry value chain. The purpose of this paper is to discuss patterns of characters' evolution in technology through patents classified as wafer‐design application patents and wafer‐process patents.

Various patent indicators, such as average patent citation count, and the combination of the average patent citation count and relative patent count share were used to measure the patent activity, patent quality, and the combination of the patent quality and relative patent activity share, respectively. The study period (1979‐2009) was divided into three major technology or wafer size eras, 1979‐1991 for the 6‐ and pre 6‐inch wafer era, 1989‐1999 for the 8‐inch wafer era, and 1997‐2009 for the 12‐inch wafer era.

Foundry has gradually become the technology transferor rather than purely the manufacturing capacity provider. Foundry's impact on the technology level has risen steeply on both the wafer‐process technology fields and the wafer‐design application technology fields. As a result, IDM, traditionally considered the primary technology contributor in the semiconductor value chain for the past 30 years, will continue to be challenged in the semiconductor industry.

Some hypotheses are clarified to provide managerial implications for the semiconductor industry. Owing to Foundry's rise in technology activity and quality, IDM/Design House should not merely view it as one of their capacity providers but should also pursue a technology alliance with it.

The paper clarifies the traditional hypotheses of the characters of technology in the semiconductor value chain.

A review of the cast iron foundry industry has been given in two parts. Part 1 concentrated on historical aspects of the UK foundry industry, whilst Part 2 will look at the important aspects for a modern foundry to succeed. The article starts with the decline of the UK foundry industry, and suggests a way to become more competitive through the advancement of new technology, and total quality assurance. The basic concepts of quality are examined and by way of an example, a case study of a British foundry shows the current problems being faced. The case study illustrates the problems faced in these days of increased competition, dwindling margins, the lack of investment, low morale leading to poor quality parts, and hence uncertain futures. Finally it is shown how the foundry can improve the quality of its products, and achieve a sound manufacturing base.

The UK foundry industry employs more people in management and supervision than any other skilled occupation. Almost one in three of these managers will have reached retirement age within the next ten years. If the industry hopes to recruit its future management from amongst its technologists and technicians there are not enough young people entering these occupations to provide an adequate supply of managers to replace those retiring. Very few managers and supervisors receive any training prior to their appointment into management. The development of new technology, the introduction of more and more legislation, the need to survive in a depressed and increasingly competitive market, the demand from customers for higher quality castings, the need to continue investment and modernisation at a time of high interest rates are just some of the factors which make the job of managing increasingly complex and time consuming.

This paper seeks to review the industrial applications of state‐of‐the‐art additive manufacturing (AM) techniques in metal casting technology. An extensive survey of concepts, techniques, approaches and suitability of various commercialised rapid casting (RC) solutions with traditional casting methods is presented.

The tooling required for producing metal casting such as fabrication of patterns, cores and moulds with RC directly by using different approaches are presented and evaluated. Relevant case studies and examples explaining the suitability and problems of using RC solutions by various manufacturers and researchers are also presented.

Latest research to optimize the current RC solutions, and new inventions in processing techniques and materials in RC performed by researchers worldwide are also discussed. The discussion regarding the benefits of RC solutions to foundrymen, and challenges to produce accurate and cost‐effective RC amongst AM manufacturers concludes this paper.

The research related to this survey is limited to the applicability of RC solutions to sand casting and investment casting processes. There is practically no implication in industrial application of RC technology.

This review presents the information regarding potential AM application – RC, which facilitates the fabrication of patterns, cores and moulds directly using the computer‐aided design data. The information available in this paper serves the purpose of researchers and academicians to explore the new options in the field of RC and especially users, manufacturers and service industries to produce casting in relatively much shorter time and at low cost and even to cast complex design components which otherwise was impossible by using traditional casting processes and CNC technology.

This paper explores the relationship between the timing and usage of process innovation and a firm's competitive business strategy. A study of 104 foundries that adopted Automatic Flaskless Matchplate Molding (AFMM) showed that the decision to adopt was significantly related to strategies of product specialization, value‐added, and customer focus, but not to low‐cost leadership. Finns with divergent competitive strategies adopted the innovation, but used it differently to reach their varying goals.

Waste foundry sand (WFS) is a by-product of the metal casting industries and is used for land filling purposes. Disposing of waste creates problems to environment and increases disposal values. To reduce environmental pollutions and solving disposal problems, several authors in worldwide are carried out research work by partial and complete replacing of natural sand with WFS in concrete mixtures. It is found that WFS can be used for production of structural grade concrete. The mechanical characteristics and flexural properties of RC beams has been reviewed in this paper. From this literature review, it has been noticed that there are improvements in concrete strength properties with WFS.

The results of various properties of concrete have been discussed in this review articles such as compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength, modulus of elasticity, SEM micro-structures and flexural strength properties of RC beams.

From the literature review, it is found that there is gap of research on flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beam with WFS.

By using WFS effectively, the environmental pollutions and dumping of waste can be reduced. WFS can be successfully used in structural concrete members.