Innovating into the future
Lodge has also continued to innovate. Its most recent improvement turned out to be a marketing bonanza. Several years ago, the company began seasoning its cookware before it leaves the factory.
Oil has to be baked into a skillet's cast iron pores before it can be used, a process many cooks find intimidating.
Many cooks consider cast iron to be an ideal heat conductor, which heats evenly and consistently.
"In a short five years we went from nothing seasoned to everything seasoned," Kellermann says. "And our slogan, when we introduced it: ‘We should have thought of this a hundred years ago.’"
Lodge has developed its own recipe for consistently producing cast iron with just the right characteristics.
"We have a spectrometer that in, oh, about 45 seconds we know 19 different elements that we can adjust for," says Larry Rado, Lodge's technical manager who is in charge of quality control. "We know exactly what we melt and we know exactly what’s going into our cookware."
Lodge also adopted the Japanese approach to improving product quality, by empowering its employees.
"Anyone here at Lodge Manufacturing can throw a casting away," Rado says. "Anybody, from the grinders, finishers, packers, we can actually stop the line."
Cast iron revival
But advanced technology and management techniques don’t tell the whole story. Lodge is also benefiting from a kind of cast iron renaissance.
最新
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27