Here is another case of our customer from South America.
The company is growing fast, extending production capacity with a new plant. They are close to finalizing their decision on thermoforming equipment, but the choice is not so easy.
They have two suppliers whose quotes are almost similar for parameters, so for the price. Both suppliers are well-known and trustworthy, providing high-quality machinery with excellent service. Both thermoforming machines have identical configurations and minor parameter variations. None is better than another, and some parameters are better in the first option, others in the second option, price is very close too.
Other companies would not spend much time and go with the one they feel more comfortable with. In our customer’s case, the goal is to find the best possible option, which requires going deeper and analyzing output and efficiency for the entire product range.
The company produces a range of trays and wants to be 100% sure that their chosen machine will perform better. If there is just 1 product, they ask for a tool offered for each machine and proceed with the most efficient one. But when you deal with a comprehensive product range, it is about forming area, cutting capacity, and cycle speed.
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They asked both suppliers to prepare detailed tool offers for 12 products. Suppliers were not happy with it. An estimation is easy, but it’s a massive job when you have to give final figures for over ten tools. There are so many parameters that there is a chance for a mistake. And customer wants parameters that will be placed on the contract, so there is no space for an error.
Why do they need it?
- First, they buy three machines and want to ensure they can get the most efficient and productive solution.
- The second reason is that they also need an extrusion line, and to finalize the spec, they need to know sheet parameters that come from the tooling. The project manager is experienced in production and understands that if extrusion and forming lines don’t match, he will have a big problem. So, as a result, the decision for thermoformers has a significant impact on the extrusion project, which is more than a 1.5 million euro investment.
Usually, such a request takes about two weeks to process by machine and tool supplier – they need to gather all product parameters and give a task to the designer team. Designers are unhappy with such requests as they take lots of time while the project is not confirmed. Those calculation gets low priority and might not be done in the best way because nobody wants to play with each of the 12 products, placing it both along and across the material directly to find the max # of cavities on the tool.
So the project manager of our customer has decided to upgrade from a free plan and make the comparison by himself based on provided machine parameters.
He has chosen the 2nd subscription plan, which gives 50 calculations, and each calculation allows you to calculate output, the weight of the product, sheet, and skelet waste.
One of the machines was already in our system, so our customer was able to get tool layouts with tool size and cut capacity confirmation; the other machine was not on the list, so he got the estimated layouts based on the information that he had from a supplier, and he only had to get a confirmation from toolmaker that those tools are ok.
It took less than an hour for our customer to create two layouts for each of the 12 products (24 designs in total). And then only two days to get confirmation from suppliers.
Another thing is the fact that our customers had a chance to play with each product to find the best tool configuration.
As the final benefit, he got clarity on specs that are required for his extrusion line and was able to proceed in both thermoforming and extrusion projects.
We could end the case here with the benefit in time and quality of layouts gathered by our customer, but the story doesn’t end here.
Once he confirmed the layouts, the comparison for both machines changed.
Our tool output calculator has allowed a transition from parameters comparison to the output comparison that is clear and understandable.
