Today, the market is increasingly competitive: manufacturers are asked for agility, ability to adapt to constantly changing needs, but also to comply with demands in constant growth that are manifested in increasingly tight batches and halved times. It is clear that, in such a situation, the term optimization related to the production cycles is not the usual ideal to strive for but an urgent need, an imperative to be achieved in the shortest possible time.
In practice, today it is essential to optimize the entire production cycle. The concept that productivity depends on the performance, reliability and accuracy of machines and operators must be integrated with the central role of software. In an increasingly complex and challenging market, the industry needs to refine design, sequences, micromachining, programs, team management and timing, that is all that elapses between the start of a project and a finished product that must comply with stringent standards of quality, lead time, minimize waste and errors. In a nutshell, excellent machines and competent operators are the solid foundation from which to start, but without an effective, advanced and even intuitive processing platform, the risk that various inefficiencies creep in becomes real and tangible.
Do not forget, in fact, that the traditional production cycle has to face many challenges that the software itself can provide adequate answers: we think of the setup times, which in certain processes (such as bending) end up falling violently on costs, but also to the fact that, during the prototyping phase, it happens that at the end of the process it is discovered that the piece is not correct in size. This causes a clear waste of time, since it is a matter of starting again from the technical office, as well as an obvious waste of material: in practice, inefficiencies on inefficiencies.
Among the specific solutions, just as an example we mention VPSS 3i BEND, software included in the virtual package AMADA and dedicated to the management and optimization of bending operations. Strongly integrated in the AMADA vSDD database, VPSS 3i BEND automatically generates the optimal bending sequence and manages the equipment of the machine proposing the best possible layout depending on the programs and processes to be performed, so as to refine operations, reduce setup time, break down errors and accelerate production. All this, while on a practical level the operator simply scans a barcode that, drawing on the vSDD database, provides all the information necessary to carry out the work with simplicity, security and productivity. Obviously, the other packs also have specific solutions such as VPSS 3i Weld and VPSS 3i Blank (Blanking Solution Pack), which takes care, starting from a BOM, to create nesting, associate cutting attributes, generate machine codes and simulate machining, then saving the production plan in the database for direct recall in the machine via the aforementioned barcode scan.
