Casting legend Olle Lofgren heads for the snow, but his knowledge stays in Zutphen

There is hardly anyone in the world with more casting knowledge than Olle Lofgren. But after more than 50 years in the metal industry, working in factories all over the world, the Swedish casting specialist is retiring from KME. With the help of ELICIT, he is now leaving his knowledge behind for future generations. Olle: “It felt like someone opened my memory of the past decades.”

Growing up in Zutphen

Olle Lofgren (66) doesn’t have much time to talk. The Swedish casting specialist has just finished his last working day and his house is being cleared out. He is returning to his home country and saying goodbye to Zutphen. “It’s quite a special moment. My father already worked in this factory in 1966, back when it was part of Svenska Metallverken. Sometimes he took us along during the summer holidays, and as a seven-year-old I walked among the machines. And since the 1990s, I’ve worked here myself, of course. Man… and how I worked here. When we commissioned the strip caster, I was here day and night. I slept on the floor.”

A global career

Over the years, Olle helped build, run, and optimize the unique brass strip casting operation at KME’s Zutphen plant. He brought with him casting expertise gathered all over the world. First as an operator, later as a (quality) manager. “I started in Zambia in 1988. That factory, close to the mines, was at the time the second-largest source of income for the Zambian government. President Kenneth Kaunda personally visited the plant. That machine ran 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Looking back, that was quite a responsibility for a 28-year-old, haha.”

After Zambia came Spain, Wisconsin, Columbus, and Buffalo, where he was responsible for casting operations worldwide: China, Thailand, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States.

“When we commissioned the strip caster, I was here day and night. I slept on the floor.”

Olle Lofgren

A brutally honest problem solver

Olle built a reputation as a problem solver who saw what others didn’t. In a foundry in Germany, he walked past a bronze casting machine and asked: “Don’t you have quality issues at these two points of the strip?” Everyone stayed silent. Three weeks later, the same team called him. The batches were indeed being rejected. Cooling channels were missing. “I could see it from the solidification pattern.”

In Buffalo, New York, he discovered that certain parts of the mold were not being cooled sufficiently. The metal did not solidify in the right place, flowed underneath, and caused dangerous steam explosions. Olle installed line-by-line monitoring and the problem disappeared.

His approach was always the same: talk to operators, talk to technicians, talk to suppliers. Bring them into your way of thinking and always be honest, even if that can be uncomfortable. On his last working day in Buffalo, an operator walked into his office, closed the door, and said: “You were the worst asshole I worked with. But you were always honest.”

Unique knowledge

With that combination of technical insight and directness, he returned to Zutphen as a casting specialist. There, he became responsible for the unique strip casting process he had seen grow and knew inside out. For years, he produced long strips of ultra-thin metal for the automotive, electrical, and electronics industries. Efficiently and at top quality.

At KME, that was already well organized. Training manuals, work instructions, documentation, everything was there. Except for the wealth of knowledge still in Olle’s head.

Still, Olle was already thinking about the generations after him. “I’ve always focused on sharing knowledge. Everywhere I went, I left behind solid procedures and instructions. At KME, that was already well organized. Training manuals, work instructions, documentation, everything was there.” Yes, everything was there. Except for the wealth of knowledge still in Olle’s head. The instinctive assessment when the metal behaves slightly differently. That one glance that detects quality deviations. Or the trained ear that hears when the machine sounds just a bit off. For that, KME turned to ELICIT

“As if someone opens your memory”

Knowledge analyst Hilbert from ELICIT interviewed Olle to capture this unique decision-making knowledge. The goal: to create a knowledge system that allows current and future casting specialists and operators to make decisions throughout the casting process, from furnace to coiler, just like Olle. “Those were intense interviews,” Olle recalls. “It’s like someone opens your memory of the past 25 years: what you did, why you did it, what went wrong, and how you solved it. I was exhausted every time.”

Hilbert impressed him. “He always stayed strictly on track. From A to B, no detours. Only the relevant information about the process. I tend to tell stories, so that probably wasn’t easy for him.”

The result: Olle’s knowledge at your fingertips

The result speaks for itself, says Olle. The ELICIT model is an interactive overview of your production process. Click on a parameter and you immediately see how it relates to the rest. If something deviates, the model shows where to look, in what order, and what steps to take. All based on Olle’s knowledge. “This is really a good system. Easy to follow,” says Olle. “Before, knowledge was spread across different training manuals, instructions, and experienced colleagues. Now you just have it on a tablet in a logical model. For new people, everything is ready for them to get started. That’s very valuable.”

“Before, knowledge was spread across different training manuals, instructions, and experienced colleagues. Now you just have it on a tablet in a logical model.”

Olle Lofgren

Peace and snow, or maybe not

With the ELICIT model and instructions as his legacy, Olle leaves KME with peace of mind. Still, it quickly became clear that people in Zutphen will need to get used to it. “Tuesday was my last day, and in the evening I already got the first call. The next morning, I ended up solving something again.”

But now he is stepping back, both literally and figuratively. Together with his wife (“Without her, none of this would have been possible”), he is heading to the far north. His apartment in Västerås is being set up, and in the meantime he is staying in his cabin on the border between Norway and Sweden, 600 kilometers northwest of Stockholm. “With 85 centimeters of snow and sunshine, wonderful. And the coming years? Sitting still is not my style. Consultancy requests from all over the world are already coming in. I’d rather not fly as much anymore. But we’ll see.”