The AccuFit system consists of three modules (1D, 2D, and 3D) that all work together seamlessly to ensure that you are getting the greatest value out of every pound of raw material that you purchase. Click a module to learn more.
AccuFit includes a patented scoring system to help planning engineers evaluate the relative merits of one plan versus another. The maximum score that any plan can receive is 100. Point deductions are taken for any aspect of the plan that might be unfavorable, such as scrap loss, additional testing costs, consumption of a brand new piece when an older one is suitable, etc. The final score allows the engineer to quickly and easily compare different plans and choose the one that is the most favorable over all.
AccuFit captures every plan that is generated in the system. Any time you want, you can go back and look at your detailed history, view a layout diagram, or reprint the cut instructions. In addition, the reports can answer important questions like, "How much scrap was generated in Q3?", "How many pounds of Ti-6Al-4V did we cut last month?", or "How many orders did Tommy plan yesterday?" All of the data is available for managers to slice and dice as they see fit, providing valuable insights into your business that you never had before.
When you and your team are ready to move forward with AccuFit, our engineers will build the custom integration required to connect directly to your ERP system so that AccuFit has full information about your customer orders and your inventory. This allows AccuFit to match the best pieces of material in your inventory with each work order, thereby minimizing scrap expense and other expenses from your operation. AccuFit produces detailed cutting plans automatically, so that you are getting the most out of your material.
AccuFit runs on all devices including Windows PCs, Macs, tablets, and even smart phones. So, however diversely connected your organization is, all of your team members can use AccuFit to view work orders, inventory, cutting plans, and reports. Everybody from the sales team to the saw operators to the CEO will finally have access to the tools and information they need for their respective roles.
To schedule a demonstration of AccuFit for your organization, please contact us by phone or email.
AccuFit 1D allows you to plan multiple jobs at once, and even allows customization of piece quantity, length, heat requirement, and more.
AccuFit 1D analyzes all of your available inventory and makes intelligent decisions about which raw material to use for which work orders. When helping you plan your material usage, the system accesses your existing ERP system to pull detailed information about your work orders and your available inventory. It then makes recommendations as to which billet or billets will be the best ones to use for a given work order. It takes into account the material and specs of the billets in your inventory and compares them to the work order requirements to find the highest yield match. If it discovers several good matches, it can be configured to automatically favor older billets over newer ones, smaller billets over larger ones, or less costly material over more expensive material.
The big savings come from its scrap reduction algorithm, which is based on the latest in artificial intelligence research. This algorithm places a high value on consuming billets in their entirety, leaving no scrap. When analyzing a particular billet or combination of billets, it not only looks at the current work order, but also future work orders which are upcoming in the schedule. It finds a solution that allows those future work orders to exactly consume the remnants of the billets being considered. Notice that we are no longer planning a single work order at a time, in isolation. Rather, AccuFit 1D is helping you to develop a comprehensive plan for how to use your entire raw material inventory in the most efficient way possible. Once you have a plan in place, AccuFit will reserve those billets for those specific work orders, and mark the material as allocated, so that same material won't be considered for subsequent work order plans.
Nesting different-sized parts into a single sheet or plate is an enormously difficult task for a planning engineer. There are simply too many possibilities to consider when you are able to choose parts from different work orders to create the perfect combination. When you add in the ability to rotate parts in order to potentially make them fit better, the number of possibilities gets exponentially larger. AccuFit 2D takes care of all of the heavy lifting when it comes to figuring out which combination and layout of parts will make the best use out of your valuable plate material.
AccuFit 2D allows you to customize your job or jobs based on grain direction, length, width, piece count, and more.
Because AccuFit is able to read the detailed requirements for each work order directly from your ERP system, there is no data entry required for the planning engineer, and therefore no opportunity for mistakes. As AccuFit is formulating the optimal cutting plan, it is taking into consideration the kerf loss due to the thickness of the blade. In addition, it is computing the total number of square inches being cut, so that the saw operators can easily track their blade life and know when a blade needs to be replaced before it starts making bad cuts.
AccuFit 2D shows a visual representation of all the plate and sheet material in your inventory that matches the material specs, alloy, and thickness required by the work order. This interface makes it easy for the planning engineer to see all of his available inventory on a single view without having to slowly page through screen after screen full of numeric tag identifiers and dimensions.
As you can see, AccuFit 2D not only selected plates from inventory that allow the planned jobs to be completed, but it also selected a "filler job" from your inventory to get a head start on completing that job. As a result, the scrap from this cutting pattern is zero.
AccuFit 3D is the only planning system available for metal distribution, manufacturing, and forging that is capable of nesting parts in three dimensions. If you stock material that can be cut along all three axes, then AccuFit 3D is the single most powerful tool that you can have in your toolbox. The number of different ways to pack and nest parts into a three-dimensional block is simply astronomical, and a human is not capable of listing or evaluating all of these arrangements in a reasonable amount of time. AccuFit, however, includes a revolutionary algorithm that can show you the best arrangement within a matter of seconds.
Our engineers have taken advantage of 50 years of computer science research from the top minds of our generation, and applied it to solving the problem of maximizing material usage. AccuFit is truly bringing artificial intelligence to the metals industry in ways that nobody else can.
Rather than planning one work order at a time, with AccuFit, planning engineers are encouraged to add several of the work orders that require the same alloy. This way, AccuFit can identify the best block available that can accommodate all of the parts required by those jobs. Cutting the entire block eliminates the need to move material back and forth between the saw and the inventory storage.
AccuFit 3D is fully aware that certain parts need to be cut such that the grain direction of the material passes along a specific part dimension. But in other cases, the requirements are more flexible, allowing AccuFit to rotate and re-orient the parts within the material in order to produce the best fit and the optimal cutting plan.
AccuFit 3D will analyze all available inventory and nest the parts into each block. It then lists the top five plans based on criteria of your choosing, such as minimizing scrap, avoiding return-to-stock material, minimizing heats, using the oldest inventory first, etc.
The optimized cutting plan can be viewed in three dimensions, allowing for easy visualization.
Because AccuFit can produce sophisticated cutting plans, it gives step-by-step instructions to the saw operator on exactly where and how to make each cut, so there's no room for error or doubt. AccuFit Solutions can optionally install large touch-screen monitors right at the cutting station, so that the operator can visually see what he or she is supposed to do next without having to squint at the paperwork.