This application required material utilization optimization as well as automation of the manufacturing process.  There are several "off the shelf" programs that offer this ability.  However, all of these programs are optimized to work with standard saws.  The unique nature of this client's business made the patterns and saw programs, created by these "off the shelf" products, unusable and unable to drive their manufacturing process.

Knight Software wrote the optimizer editor and post processor to meet those needs.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, we used an "off the shelf" optimization product as a first step for choosing stock and creating initial patterns. 

Saw Program imports this data and uses optimization algorithms to calculate the best cost for manufacturing each pattern. 

An efficient user interface allows the user to edit patterns and create new patterns while giving instant feedback of the manufacturing steps and costs as a result of each modification.  The user interface provides every speed benefit possible including:

	Multi-Piece Drag and Drop, with automatic target selection (drops to closest available destination).
	Automatic validation (will not allow invalid modifications).
	Keyboard shortcuts for quick traversal of patterns.
	Work modes for efficiently setting up the user interface to perform common tasks.
	Large Numeric Display for quickly evaluating information by simply selecting each piece.
	WYSIWYG for manufacturing.

Saw Program drives the manufacturing process with its optimized cutting steps by writing them directly to the database which drives the manufacturing process.

This program greatly reduced the time it took to create the manufacturing plan and also removed the majority of human error by automatic validation and automating all calculations and Data Entry where possible.  For locations where manufacturing rules were not absolute, an efficient user interface allows the user to quickly modify the patterns.  

Saw Program allows an operator to modify up to 60 patterns in fifteen minutes.  Prior to the deployment of this application and using only commercial nesting software, this process required three people and was error prone.  It now requires approximately half of one person's time.

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For ideas on how your manufacturing, design, or business processes can be automated to reduce error and save time, please contact us at solutions@knightsoft.com or call us at 248-476-5004.