Tool, Product and BOM Management for Sheet Metal Stamping
Three masters decide what a run order costs before it starts. The tool decides how many strokes it takes: multi station dies carry their station count and the setup strokes each changeover spends, multi cavity dies carry a fractional strokes per unit ratio so parts and strokes are never confused. The bill of materials decides how much strip it eats, through a usage factor, a scrap factor and an average in process rejection percentage held per product and material. Those three factors compute required material and expected scrap on the order form, then get recomputed from real infeed and reject counts once the press is running.
- Die types
- Single stroke and multi station
- Cavities
- One or more, fractional ratio per unit
- Setup strokes
- Calculated per changeover
- Material types
- 14, including coils, coiled sheet, strips and single sheet
- Per product and material
- Usage factor, scrap factor, in process rejection
- Mapping topologies
- One to one, one to many, many to one
- Lot selection
- FIFO, oldest stock first
In the product
The three factors doing the work: required material and expected scrap, computed from the planned quantity before the coil is loaded.
What it does
- Progressive die support
- Multi station die configuration with automatic setup stroke calculation, so the strokes spent reaching the last station are counted rather than absorbed.
- Multi cavity configuration
- Decimal precision strokes per unit, so a die making several parts a stroke is counted exactly rather than rounded.
- Co-production from one coil
- Several products can share a single material, which is how a strip yielding more than one part is actually planned.
- Material and scrap before the run
- Required material and expected scrap are computed from the three factors as the order is written, not estimated afterwards.
- Actual consumption from the press
- Consumption and scrap are recomputed from real infeed and reject counts, and written automatically rather than keyed in.
- Coil level stock with FIFO
- Material lives as lots. Allocation happens at work order start, deduction on completion, against a ledger that cannot be edited.
- Setup instructions per combination
- A PDF attaches to the exact asset, product and tool combination, so the operator gets the right sheet rather than the folder.
How it works
Configure the die
Single stroke or multi station, station count, cavities and rated life against the tool.
Map product to material
Set the usage factor, the scrap factor and the in process rejection percentage for that pairing.
Write the order
Required material and expected scrap appear as the quantity is typed, with the lots that can fulfil it.
Who this is for
- A planner sizing coil off a spreadsheet that nobody has audited in a year.
- A shop blanking several parts from one strip with no way to split the material between them.
- An operation where scrap is only discovered when the weighbridge disagrees.
Questions
- How are multi cavity dies handled?
- The ratio of strokes to parts is held per tool at decimal precision, so a die producing several parts per stroke is counted exactly rather than rounded.
- Do multi station dies cost extra strokes?
- Yes. The strip has to reach the last station before the first good part appears, and those setup strokes are calculated for every changeover.
- What does a nested mapping mean?
- Several products drawing on one material, which is co-production from a single coil. It is not a bill of materials with depth: the structure is one level, product to material.
- Can a product be made of other products?
- No. There are no sub assemblies and no multi level explosion. A product maps to the materials it consumes, and that is the whole structure.
- Is expected scrap stored?
- No. It is computed live while the order is written. What gets stored and compared afterwards is the actual scrap, derived from recorded reject counts.
Related
See it on your own presses.
We instrument one press, run it for a month, and show you the shift record against what you thought was happening.
Book a walkthrough