Success story: £80,000 on material savings
UK-based Eminox Ltd switched to the Radan sheet metal CAD/CAM software and saved £80,000 on material usage in the first year. According to Alex Mills, the Company's Information Systems Manager, the savings were purely the result of Radan's excellent nesting capabilities.
   Eminox had changed nothing. In fact, they used the same files and geometry to create exactly the same products. But according to Mills, Radan nests the components far more efficiently than the standard software provided with the laser cutters.
    With more than 8,000 active laser parts at any given time, Mark Atkinson, Laser Nester and Production Planner, creates between 40 and 50 Radan nests a day, to create an average of 1,000 parts.
    The actual combination of parts varies from day to day. And Atkinson believes that using Radan's Project Nesting function enables quicker and more efficient creation of new nests specific to each day's individual requirements. Most nests take approximately five minutes to generate, containing a maximum of 30 different parts on two and a half 2,500 x 1,250mm stainless steel blanks.
   Next, the parts are assembled into Eminox's high value environmental control systems such as Eminox CRT (Continuously Regenerating Trap), SCRT (CRT + Selective Catalytic Reduction) and FBC (Fuel Borne Catalyst). These systems reduce pollutant gases and particulate matter in medium and large sized diesel engines on commercial vehicles, trains and offroad vehicles.
    Being a just-in-time company, Eminox's ERP software uses the Japanese Kanban style of scheduling which determines what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce at its main manufacturing site in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. The company builds thousands of systems every year for OEMs and for retro-fitting.
Its Laser Module Access database identifies the day's manufacturing demand from the ERP software, which generates the schedules for the production department to know what to cut.
   It identifies the dxf files corresponding to those parts and quantities, and builds the system files for Radan. Once manufacturing starts on the exhaust system design, created from Catia, the sheet metal is not touched by human hand till the profiled part is removed off the laser for rolling or bending. No inspection is done at the laser production stage; Mills is confident that Radan will get it right first time.
   That's because every part transferred from design to the ERP system is checked by Radan. In case of any issues, like unwanted open contours, Radan won't allow the part to be transferred. The CAD software is completely integrated with Radan using VBA tools.
   Besides the whopping £80,000 first year material savings, Eminox also got other key advantages from Radan including automation through the VBA capability. With the press of a single key, Atkinson can perform a sequence of operations that would otherwise require six or seven keystrokes. Mills says that he and his team push Radan's nesting functions to the limit.
     The fact that Radan is developed by a software company makes all the difference, according to him. Now, Eminox is considering investing in CNC machines for laser tube cutting and it will be choosing Radan to program it, irrespective of the machine manufacturer.
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