The latest version of Lectra’s marker-making solution dedicated to the furniture industry saves manufacturers thousands in fabric costs per year
Lectra, a world leader in integrated technology solutions dedicated to industries using soft materials – fabrics, leather, technical textiles and composite materials – has released DiaminoFurniture V6R2, the latest version of its marker-making solution for upholstered furniture.
This new release expands the scope of automated marker-making capabilities, accelerating the product development process, delivering higher quality finished products and maximizing material saving in the cutting room.
Today, consumers demand furniture that reflects their lifestyle. They want sophisticated pieces in an infinite variety of colours and fabrics, with ever-shorter lead times.
Manufacturers must therefore constantly renew their offer, making it difficult to remain profitable and competitive, as they have to create and manage a greater number of increasingly complex markers to fulfil orders on time and on budget.
DiaminoFurniture is a key element of Lectra’s end-to-end furniture offer, using automation to accelerate the pre-production process, and removing time-consuming, repetitive manual tasks.
For manufacturers, the situation is further complicated by rising fabric costs, driving them to find less costly alternatives to protect margins and maintain competitiveness. Cheaper materials are more likely to contain flaws, such as differences in shading for plain fabrics and variations in pattern repeats, increasing waste and reducing profitability.
“This growing demand for broader choice and more frequently renewed models puts upholstered furniture manufacturers under enormous pressure. They have to find new ways to get their products to market faster and reduce costs,” says Céline Choussy Bedouet, chief marketing officer, Lectra.
“Because fabric accounts for up to 40% of furniture’s cost price, efficient marker-making, which optimises material use, gives a real competitive advantage,” explains Céline.
This latest version of DiaminoFurniture delivers additional fabric savings of 1.1% compared to previous versions, which already used cutting-edge technology. For example, in the case of a
Lectra customer using 350,000m of fabric a year with a purchase price of €30 per meter, the saving obtained through optimised marker-making would amount to €115,500 annually.
DiaminoFurniture’s powerful algorithm simulates multiple marker options, extracting the maximum from each fabric roll. Marker simulations can be run in batches, in hidden time or even overnight for improved efficiency.
The solution can also give accurate cost estimates very early in the product development process, ensuring that all proposed models meet cost targets. This accelerates product development and keeps the need for expensive physical prototypes to a minimum, generating significant savings as each physical prototype can cost up to five times as much as the finished model itself.
Quality is enhanced as fabric flaws, shade and pattern repeat variations are now taken into account automatically, reducing costs and saving time in the cutting room.
