NKC

The system that automates the workflow

NKC was established in collaboration with one of the leading players in sofa production. We have gathered the needs of this industry and developed a product that can be successfully used in other production areas as well. In particular, NKC is ideal in settings where you want to automate and speed up as much as possible the steps involved in making finished products, starting with customer orders and incoming logistics and ending with the delivery of machined parts.

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  • Integration with enterprise ERP systems
  • CAM based production estimation and optimization process for production planning
  • Complete production logistics flow management
  • Capillary tracking of every single piece of production
  • Integrated production progress management
  • Automatic generation of processing programs on plants

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Features

The first phase involves importing data from the company ERP system. Detail orders provide a set of CSV files in which, for each shift, the items to be produced linked to the relevant final order code are indicated. The data are validated for consistency and then imported into the system.

The first phase involves using our EgtCam5 CAD/CAM engines to simulate the machine times required to make each part. In this way, an overall expected time can be associated with each order entered.

Since the system provides for multiple twin plants capable of performing the same operational task, it is possible to select an automatic scheme for balancing them or to go in and modify it manually at will, so that you can decide how much you need to have all the plants working for a single shift or rather when you prefer to concentrate work on one plant over several shifts for maintenance or business management needs.

Once the order/plant assignment scheme is selected, the CAD/CAM system recalculates all conditions, nesting to optimize resource utilization. Processes are recalculated and part programs for each stage and plant generated and saved. Also defined are the material lists (bunk) that are expected by the plants to carry out autonomously and automatically scheduled processing.

A special set of application pages guide logistics operators to the correct pickup of materials that in the right sequences will represent the stacks (bunk) that will feed the plants being processed.

On the plant, the production support software takes care of everything: each time an ordered stack of materials (bunk) is scanned, autonomously the sw will proceed to retrieve the part programs needed for the various stages of printing, processing and unloading, launch the processes and communicate the part-by-part progress to the central NKC server.

By means of special large screens, each unloading station will be managed for the pickup phase of each manufactured part by smart scanners. The readout will go to indicate, both on the scanner and on the screen, which part was picked up, its code and its destination in terms of the destination cart code (and thus order) so that each and every part produced, uniquely identified by the QRCode, will have its location predicted and verified.

In the case of ancillary processing such as painting or other types of finishing, the system will take care of tracking their progress and registration at the logistics level, asking operators to confirm that the operations are actually being carried out correctly, or conversely, generating orders to restore materials indicated as scrap but which are needed to complete the kits to be shipped to customers.

The final stage involves the reconciliation of the carts containing the parts already produced and scanned and any parts that have been subject to special finishing operations or any non-machining accessories but necessary to complete the kits to be shipped to the customer. This will provide a timely and specific reading of each component needed to avoid problems with missing items once the kit arrives at its destination.