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As a panel builder operating in today’s excruciatingly competitive marketplace, it’s very likely that keeping costs under control and eliminating waste are never far from your mind. But have you looked at all of the aspects of your manufacturing processes that might lead to inflated costs?
Sure, there are some areas that will jump out at you, like making best possible use of expensive copper and cables, but there are other areas that are so routine that almost no one gives them a second thought. Cutting mounting bars and trunking to length falls into this category.
Are these operations worth a second thought? Only you know enough about your own operations to decide for sure, but unless you’re a very unusual panel builder the answer is almost certainly yes. Over a year, it’s a safe bet that you use rather a lot of trunking and almost as much mounting rail. And you need to accurately cut thousands of pieces of each to exact lengths.
Have you ever considered how much time this takes and how much scrap is produced when the length isn’t quite right? Probably not! But maybe it’s worth wandering out onto the shop floor and making a quick assessment. Don’t forget to look in the scrap bin – after all, although trunking and mounting rail certainly aren’t as expensive as copper, neither are they free. And the time your employees take to cut them up is definitely costing you money – especially when they have to do it twice, because the first piece they cut was too long or too short.
Sure, there are some areas that will jump out at you, like making best possible use of expensive copper and cables, but there are other areas It is, of course, all very well identifying a problem, but a solution is even more useful and what can possibly be done to make the cutting of trunking and mounting rail more efficient? The first part of the answer is to use a good computer-aided engineering (CAE) package for your design work. One that will calculate the exact length of every piece of trunking and mounting rail used in the panels you’re making. The second part of the answer is to use an automated cutting centre.
This will take cutting data directly from your CAE package and automatically setting the stop for each piece of trunking or mounting rail that needs to be cut. All the operator has to do is to push the trunking or rail up to the stop and press a button to initiate the cutting operation. It takes only a second or two, so it’s much quicker than manual cutting. In addition, the machine makes a clean, accurately aligned cut every time and the piece is always cut to exactly the right length.
Measuring mounting rail and trunking is simple with EPLAN Pro Panel.
Of course, the time and money savings you make on a single cut are not huge, but multiply those savings by the number of cuts you make each day, week, month and even year, then factor in the reduction in scrap, and it’s easy to see that canny cutting really can cut costs – significantly!
Assuming that you’re a canny panel builder you’ll want to know more, so request your free assessment to discover other ways that you can optimise your panel building processes
that are so routine that almost no one gives them a second thought. Cutting mounting bars and trunking to length falls into this category.
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