Metal Stockholding & Fabrication
Whether a steel manufacturer, a ferrous or non-ferrous metal stockholder, a steel fabrication company offering bespoke sheet metalwork and fabrication services, an architectural metal company supplying flashings and fabrications to the industrial roofing and cladding industry, or a business producing end products ranging from trailers, to access doors, to mailboxes. what is common across all aspects of the metal stockholding and fabrication industry is that the production process centres around producing a series of cut parts from stock material.
How can SECANT help me?
Whilst making decisions as to how to cut plan production, various considerations might need to be made. What is the policy of the business relating to offcut production and usage? Are there strict deadlines on meeting production, or is an expensive material being used which must have the absolute minimum wastage possible regardless of production time? Could multiple different orders be combined when planning to make more efficient use of material – and what effect would that have on work in progress? What are the restrictions on the saw or guillotine in terms of pattern layout and content? As a manual process this is time-consuming, prone to error and unlikely to give the most efficient result.
SECANT Enterprise takes your parts list and stock availability and automatically generates cutting plans with an optimal but customisable balance between material usage and production time. Patterns can be sent directly to automatic saws, eliminating the time-consuming and error-prone process of rekeying, or a variety of customised printed reports can be generated giving clear instructions to saw operators.
Cut part and stock information can be imported from Excel or CSV files, or cut and pasted/entered manually into SECANT directly. For further integration with 3rd party software, bespoke interfaces can be developed.
Failing to manage offcuts can result in capital being tied up in an ever-expanding range of raw material sizes. The decisions on when to use an offcut and when to create an offcut are a vital part of cut planning. Creating an offcut may reduce wastage, but the offcut will need to be re-handled before its value can be realised. With SECANT Enterprise, you can implement a consistent offcuts policy.
The highest yields and the most efficient saw usage can generally be achieved by allowing SECANT to freely combine any of the piece sizes in the cutting list. However, such patterns may result in an unacceptable amount of work in progress where at any time a large number of orders are partially complete. SECANT Enterprise can constrain the result so that pieces are produced broadly in line with a production schedule, or to meet the production requirements downstream of the saw.
The objective of an optimisation can be dependent on the current status of the business at any given time – a high value material may require an absolute maximum yield optimisation, or an urgent order may need producing in the fastest possible time. The multi-objective optimisation functionality of SECANT Enterprise allows the user to run the same cutting list and stock file against multiple control configurations. The user may then review all the results before selecting the best option to send forward for production.
For direct interfacing with automatic saws SECANT Enterprise can produce interface files in the standard PTX and CPOUT formats as well as in the native formats of a wide range of saw manufacturers. A selection of controls also allows patterns to be tailored to the capabilities of the saw.
Which Product Suits You Best?
Only Require Linear Cut Planning?
SECANT Bar
Produces high yield linear cutting plans for all types of long product, bar, beam and section across a variety of materials.
SECANT Bar is for businesses of all sizes who process linear materials producing cut lengths for direct sale to clients or further processing within the business who want to save material, gain time and eliminate mistakes during production by optimising their planning process.
Recommended
SECANT Enterprise
SECANT Enterprise produces cutting plans with an optimal balance between material usage and production time with both cost-based and multi-objective optimisation algorithms. It can be fully integrated with order management and stock control systems, and link directly to your cutting device.
SECANT Enterprise is for more complicated manufacturing environments producing higher volumes using beam saws or angular saw plants.
Only have a small workshop?
SECANT Plate
Produces accurate, low wastage cutting plans for all types of steel, aluminium and architectural cladding materials.
SECANT Plate produces high yield cut plans for all types of plate material with exact production and intelligent offcut creation and management. This product is for smaller workshops using guillotine or single axis beam saws.
Industry Proven & Trusted
