Sheet metalworking involves plenty of processes and the products have a wide range of applications in many different industries. For a contract manufacturer specialising in carrying out sheet metalworking, it is not surprising to see the shop floor filled with different parts of varying shapes and sizes.

With such diversity comes a need to get organised because a cluttered warehouse or shop floor is never a model of productivity or efficiency. Labels used to be in vogue but to get things organised in today’s manufacturing climate, ERP is the tool all decent-sized companies would look at.

There are many ERP suites around but not all are specially designed for sheet metal. The opposite is true as well. Although developed specially for the industry, the ERP concept for the sheet metalworking industry follows the basis found in typical business management.

For example, the aim of the software program is to enable the running of a successful business through the collaboration and cooperation between a whole range of job functions, in order to maximise customer satisfaction while optimising profit margins.

Sharing Of Information
Lantek Factory is one example of a concept to achieve the aims of efficiency, communication and profit. According to the originator of the concept, information sharing in real-time is at the heart of the theory, working from a common database across the whole company.

Starting with the sales team and customer relationship management, quotations can be prepared and delivered in minutes, producing accurate pricing from live information about material costs, production times and expected profit margins. Based on current workload, the team is able to offer realistic 

Once accepted, the sales order is processed and passed to production planning where the production order is placed and the job is fitted into the production schedule. Next the production engineers create the program, allocate the machine and the material and nest the parts to maximise material utilisation.

Shared information goes to the warehouse where material is delivered to the allocated machine ready for manufacture and stock levels are updated triggering reordering of material where necessary.

On the machine, the operator logs start and finish times to record the status of the job and the manufacturing times as the parts are being produced. This real-time information goes to the administration team where delivery notes and invoices are raised, information about the cost of the job consolidated and instructions for shipment of the parts issued to the warehouse.

Managers have an overview of the complete process so that they can monitor production and the status of individual jobs and keep themselves informed about overall business metrics such as profit margins, sales and delivery performance. The concept brings together all products necessary for each application into one integrated solution, enabling a solution for individual companies that will mimic the structure and interrelationships of all the different areas within that company to produce improvements in efficiency.

Putting ERP Through The (Sheet Metal) Works
One subcontractor of sheet metal, LaserMaster fabricates products for a variety of industries including aerospace, motor sport and automation. Early in 2013, the company invested in a Bystronic BySprint 4 kW fibre optic laser with ByTrans automated sheet load/unload. At the same time, they installed an ERP system specifically designed for sheet metalworking.

To fill the available capacity that the new machine has created, the company needs to produce around 50 quotes every day. Tim Hicks, CAD/CAM engineer at the company says: “It is vital for us to get the quotes done very quickly. All the parts we produce are different with the occasional repeat order. Lantek Integra includes information about material costs to give us accurate selling prices. In addition, the system monitors the success rates of our quotations so we can see how we are performing against our sales targets.”

With Lantek Manager, a workshop management system, the company can keep track of the status of each job and its location in the workshop ready for secondary operations such as bending or painting. The solution is also able to generate sales orders, invoices and delivery notes, all related to the original quotation. Mr Hicks adds: “We can log into the system to check that no parts are missed and that all the operations have been completed.”

The new machine runs four to five hours most nights with the automatic sheet loader. Machine utilisation during the day is around 70 percent. Parts are tagged into the sheet for efficient handling. Mr Hicks says: “The Bystronic and Lantek software combination is 50 percent more efficient than our previous setup and we have the potential to produce four times more work than before.”

CAD/CAM For Sheet Metal
Intec Laser Services specialises in the subcontract market and has customers in industries including aerospace, defence, automotive and white goods, supplying parts cut by both laser and waterjet. The company’s arsenal of sheet metalworking machine tools includes a 6kW Trumpf L3030 fully automatic laser cutting machine fitted with a TrueStore sheet handling unit.

The machine enables the company to produce suitable components unmanned overnight. Here, Lantek’s facility for microjointing helps to keep parts securely in the sheet. Dave Millar, MD of the company says: “We tend to use rectangular nests as we are generally making 10 or 20 sheets of the same product. Without microjointing parts could jam the machine, which may result in the loss of a full night’s production.”

The speed of programming possible with Lantek Expert, is one of the major benefits of the CAD/CAM software. Mr Millar adds: “Because we are in the subcontract industry we have a continual flow of new parts. The programming is fast, helping us keep up with customer’s demand for very short lead-times. In addition, when we have a bottleneck in manufacture, it allows us to easily switch nests from one machine to another quickly with two mouse clicks, improving the flexibility of production.”

Manage It Right
Technological advances in fibre laser and automation have aided sheet metalworking immensely over the past few years and quite rightly captured the imaginations of many. However, without proper management, any increase in productivity or efficiency achieved during the cutting or transporting process will be lost.

For today’s contract manufacturers who can ill afford to keep a high level of stock in their warehouse, a good ERP system can go a long way in helping them achieve better operational productivity.

ERP is believed to be introduced in the 1990s. Its roots can be traced back to various material resource planning software programs.