The interior design and joinery business has always been a tough business but especially in recent years and competition has increased significantly. The more the competition in the market increases, the more companies have to be productive to win tenders. As the material prices and labour costs are more or less at their peak, the industry is now about to improve its workflows – and that is only possible with software and better organisation.
Currently most of the industry started already to implement some kind of software in order to speed up their process in certain departments. AutoCAD 2D became a standard for design and technical shop floor drawings within the industry. But all other necessary information during the whole production process is very often still created manually which results into high time consumption and error-prone processes. But this is no longer necessary today.
Companies can save a lot of time in sales, engineering and production if they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel every time.
What makes it complicated is the amount of different work steps which have to be processed during the execution of an order: estimation, shop floor drawings, cutting lists, BOQs, stock management, material orders, time calculation and capacity planning for the factory, quality control, shipping organisation, CNC files and so on… and of course, at the end of the day it would be necessary to do a post-calculation of the job – all this in as little time as possible.
But how to optimise such a complex process? The only way is to make information which has been already created available for the next process. Not as a sheet of paper – it has to be digital so the information can be used straight away.
This is exactly what CAD+T Software is offering to interiors businesses. Even for bespoke furniture, the information will only be created once and all other necessary data will be created by the software automatically – from design to installation.
But where lies the secret of such a system? The heart of the system is the drawing. Still built on AutoCAD, the CAD+T add-on gives draftsmen the possibility of drawing the parts directly in 3D even though they can still work on 2D. On these parts, information about materials, finishes, edges, profiles, hardware, etc can be saved. So the drawing consists of more than only lines and text – it actually understands what is being drawn.
This fact provides the opportunity to receive from the shop floor drawing automatically a cutting list as well as a bill of materials and many other documents. There are further different production lists possible, whatever a company specifically requires – from material order reports to packing lists.
CNC
Lots of joineries have already invested into CNC woodworking machines in order to speed up work and improve quality. But obviously these machines need to receive the right information in order to process the job. Even this information can be created automatically from CAD+T’s software. The company has specifically developed a highly sophisticated interface for CNC machines. The interface separates all pieces according to material and sends the information directly to the machines. The necessary working method according to the different materials, oversizes, starting points, tools and all other required information will be chosen automatically as well. CAD+T offers interfaces to all common three- and five-axis CNC machines on the market as well as tools for lipping, vacuum positioning and nesting.
Operations
Besides all the technical information required to execute a job, every workshop will need to have plenty of commercial and operational information – like material consumption, wastage, labour hours, capacity planning, prices for materials and labour etc.
In order to offer a complete solution, CAD+T provides support in all these areas. Combining the custom-made information from the drawing together with a company-specific database of prices, capacities, etc. All this information will be created automatically from the system as well.
In addition to the classic modules like Commercial Order Management for estimation and costing, Technical Order Management for cutting lists, BOM and productions lists as well as Operations Control for automatic time calculations and time taking, CAD+T offers the CAD+T operation software professional. This highly powerful system offers even more automation to simplify and enhance all processes of joineries.
Users can assign certain jobs to certain employees and their execution will be managed by the system. Jobs, deadlines, orders and deliveries are part of the system and will be synchronised with Outlook. Therefore they are available all the time, independently, whether in the office or on site.
This leads to less queries and secures an undisturbed operation. Additional modules available are CRM, estimation through different methods, document control, ordering system, invoice control, variable stock management including half finished goods, part tracking through the production process and picking/shipping lists.
As the production process becomes more and more machine-driven, the handling of the production becomes very difficult only to be done by verbal communication of foremen as it is not measurable. To receive better productivity of a factory, management will need to understand the right costs and times of it – and software can provide exactly this information.
By barcoding, companies will receive a feedback from the factory: knowing where a certain part or a project is at any moment within the production process, what the material costs are for it, and which labour has done which work on it already – so users will understand where gain and where money is won and lost. This provides management with the opportunity to decide, based on real figures, where to invest or where to change processes in order to increase the productivity.
In short, this means that after the finalisation of the drawing, all other information – technical or commercial – is acheived with a push of a button. Software can therefore offer huge time savings of around 60% per order as well as error prevention of up to 80%. In turn, this offers the opportunity of handling and quoting more projects with higher profit margins at the same time.
"Software can therefore offer huge time savings of around 60% per order as well as error prevention of up to 80%."
CAD+T has its head office in Austria and was founded in 1990. With eight branches in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, UAE and Thailand and more than 70 employees, CAD+T is an ideal partner to improve company processes with its knowledge and experience.
The main CAD+T product is the software, which consists of 60 different modules for furniture manufacturers, interior designers and furniture traders. The software is structured in a modular fashion which allows CAD+T Software to create the perfect package for each client according to individual requirements.
In addition, the pricing is done per module which assures that customers only pay what’s really needed. Besides the software modules, CAD+T offers regular training and consultation for its customers.
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