• Advanced Manufacturing

SHEET HAPPENS VII: The art of taming stocks of sheet metal: Configuration and good practices

  • Advanced Manufacturing
Today we are looking at how to keep control of sheet metal stocks and remnants. Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed, trying to keep track of all the different sheet sizes and remnants you’ve been adding on the fly? Now, you keep getting a huge selection of sheet sizes options that appear every time you try to use “do all” in the automatic nesting and machining page.

Smart pricing

  • Advanced Manufacturing
It is generally quite difficult to know exactly how much each process contributes to a product’s value chain. The sheet metal world is not immune to the difficulty of estimating the right price for the product. There is an infinite number of processes that add value to a product: material used, scrap generated, cutting time, consumables used, labor associated with production, miscellaneous indirect costs, etc.

In-Workshop Tracking

  • Advanced Manufacturing
A sheet metal workshop is a complex environment. Regardless of whether it’s a large or small workshop, every day there are materials, orders, and tools constantly moving from one side to the other. Without proper organization it’s easy for everything to quickly fall into chaos. As a result, all workshops have their own way of organizing and managing internal logistics. Some have more sophisticated methods while others use more simple ones. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement. Internal logistics and organization are intangible assets that can improve workshop performance without a great deal of investment. A 10% more efficient procedure can allow for 10% more production and the cost of this is always lower than purchasing better machinery.