Equipment manufacturer HKHI was not getting the expected results from its nesting program. In an effort to boost productivity and cut costs, the company turned to SigmaNEST®.

INDUSTRY

Port machinery, marine cranes, mining equipment and offshore platform.

PRODUCTION

350,000 square meter facility

Annual design and production capacity of 80,000 tons of slipways

Two 37,000-ton bulk cargo carriers and one 57,000-ton bulk cargo carrier were completed and delivered in 2011.

11 carious plasma and oxyfuel cutting machines (ESAB, Hypertherm, Koike, Wuxi Hualian)

FABRICATION CHALLENGES

Fabrication operations at HKHI faced two significant challenges:

The previous nesting software performed poorly. As a result scrap rates climbed and time was wasted as nests were constantly reworked.

At one point, an outside design institute had assisted with nesting. When this was discontinued HKHI programmers were forced to nest parts on their own.

SIGMANEST®

HKHI set out to find a better nesting solution. In 2009, after evaluating a number of alternatives, the company selected and installed SigmaNEST. Since that time the company has seen a tremendous return on investment.

“SigmaNEST is much more people-oriented than our previous nesting solution,” explained Miss Wang, HKHI Nesting Technician. “The output part list helps our manufacturing activity to track part quantities in real-time. Part quantities are clearly displayed on the part column, which can prevent nesting mistakes. The change-making for part features becomes more reasonable. Inventory and remnant tracking is also more efficient. Through our materials library we can easily check remnant sizes. Thanks to SigmaNEST our costs have been decreasing.”

In addition the manufacturing department at HKHI often received Tribon™ part files to be nested and cut. Through the engineering conversion functionality of SigmaNEST SimTrans™ all the Tribon files were easily converted into the part geometry and quickly nested.

MEASURING RESULTS

SigmaNEST is delivering measureable and sustainable results:

Material utilization has been improved by 3% – 5% reaching a 93% efficiency level.

SigmaNEST’s common cutting functionality is reducing nesting and cutting time. The result is a boost in productivity and lower cutting costs.

With its powerful nesting algorithm, fast calculation and ease of use, SigmaNEST has slashed nesting from an entire day to only 1 – 2 hours.

The bridge function of SigmaNEST is extending tool life by reducing part piercing and idle running.