Bystronic Voice Blog

Gaining the edge in today’s competitive market requires intelligence derived from data and the ability to act upon information to improve processes and machine performance.

As mentioned in our previous series, we’ve identified some of the most common areas for process variability and bottlenecks in the metal fabricating value chain. Press brake efficiency and capacity are at the top of most fabricator’s minds when bottlenecks are in question.

In continuation of our multi-part series on analyzing the value chain, we now look at manual CNC press brake bending operations. CNC bending operations continue to be a mostly manually intensive task for the majority of fabrication shops, although advancements in technology have reduced the overall setup time associated with press brake operations.

In Part 2 of our multi-part blog series on analyzing the metal fabricating value chain, we will analyze the flow of the raw material. More specifically, how efficiently is material being presented to the laser cutting system and how efficient is the unloading, sorting, and stacking of the finished cut parts.

So what does your metal fabricating value chain look like? Can you already determine where your improvements will come from?