9 Ways OnRamp ERP Improves Nesting

Author: Paul Henriques in: Business Solutions

9 Ways OnRamp ERP Improves Nesting

March 30, 2023

OnRamp ERP is the only system that brings nesting into your overall manufacturing process. That is, OnRamp ERP integrates nesting with:

  • Planning
  • Scheduling
  • Materials management
  • Output Reports
  • Maintenance
  • Quality
  • Your preferred nesting CAD/CAM software

All this with the click of a button or the swipe of a finger. All your data in one place and accessible from any place.

In the same way that nesting streamlines the process of layout and material use, OnRamp ERP has gone one step further by taking those factors and integrating them into your overall manufacturing workflow. OnRamp ERP can:

  • Schedule laser productivity to optimize working hours
  • Scheduling downtime
  • Monitor material availability
  • Instantly display which order is next
  • Balance machine capacity
  • Change production order on the fly
  • Allow for remote monitoring and updates
  • Seamlessly integrate nesting with ERP

There is no longer a burst of paperwork, confusion, and possible errors. With your systems seamlessly integrated, changes to quantities, materials, nests, and more are updated in your ERP and immediately available to any affected business unit and system.

OnRamp ERP Nesting Benefits

OnRamp ERP was created to cut out middle men. We know that fully integrating your ERP, MES, Nesting, and every other system into one produces improved performance. Our partners have seen these improvements to operations because of tools like:

  • Exporting your nesting demand
  • Digitizing your work centers
  • Improved your operator and tool scheduling
  • Managing your material
  • Notifications for any order changes
  • Better Maintenance
  • Better coordination between supervisors
  • Transparency for operators
  • Informed customers
Nesting Benefits Daisy Wheel

Export Nesting Demand

While most ERP integrations only provide nesting with an order-by-order basis, OnRamp ERP exports your demand so your nesting software can set the optimal nesting configuration across all of the orders you have in the queue. By combining demands from multiple orders into one nest – which is tracked through the cutting process – you optimize nesting configurations, cutting tool, and operator time.

Digitized Work Centers

Instead of running about with a booklet of work orders, OnRamp ERP integrates them and displays any real-time changes on a shop monitor with data like:

  • Upcoming nests
  • Production times
  • Cut times
  • Required maintenance
  • Outages
  • Work instructions
  • Schedule changes

These are used by operators and supervisors to keep your staff and tools running at peak efficiency.

Improved Scheduling

Every second that a machine isn’t running is wasted time and money. A department with operators twiddling thumbs while waiting for a tool to finish cutting is an unproductive department. The causes of this are varied: Changes to work orders, lasers running at different speeds, nesting by order instead of demand. Scheduling staff around these issues was fast becoming a headache.

With OnRamp ERP, you can implement innovative solutions to these issues, like:

  • Drag-and-drop scheduling – Quickly drag-and-drop any nest or work order into a different cutting tool
  • Scheduling automated runs – See the length of a run at a glace, which allows you schedule longer automated runs over lunch or near the end of a shift
  • Scheduling operator breaks – With all the boosts to scheduling and automation, you can ensure your operators take their scheduled breaks with no loss to production
  • Easy to rearrange – Drop orders into the locations where they make the most sense, so you can save time and improve customer satisfaction
  • Reducing required manpower – A better understanding of what you need allows you to maximize your operator productivity, ensuring less staff and saving you money
  • Cut speed considerations – Quickly see the predicted speed to cut the material in a work order and reschedule the order to a different tool

Managing Material

Work centers that are still using a paper copy of a work order to document everything (like scrap, defects, or sheets used) will have information get lost in the shuffle. Nesting was developed to reduce material waste and you need to monitor for exactly that. Keeping your shop humming at high efficiency means that you need to know what is happening at your work centers, the sooner the better.

With OnRamp ERP, all that information must be added to the order before moving on to the next. This means that your order data immediately and always up-to-date, system-wide. OnRamp ERP also generates reports that your materials manager can use to compare if an order matches with the BOM and input the cost variance. There is also an inventory control module to let your team know what is available, what needs to be ordered, and what can be reused in a later order.

And to ensure ownership and transparency, the operator and supervisor on duty is always attached to the record of who was operating the machine.

Notifications and Corrections

Have you ever been out of the office when a rush order comes in? What if you didn’t have a way to let your team know of the change? Maybe they couldn’t hear the phone or the receptionist was out to lunch. Either way, timing can be critical in this type of situation.

In OnRamp ERP, you are notified immediately (via email, SMS, or in the app) of any issues in the schedule. If you receive a new customer purchase order or a sudden outage, you will know about it. And since you can connect to OnRamp ERP from anywhere, you can quickly update the order list or rearrange the schedule. Drag the updated order to a new cutting tool or increase the urgency. Whatever you need to do.

And don’t worry, with shop monitors, your operators are notified of the changes in real-time.

Preventative Maintenance Alarms

OnRamp ERP also helps ensure your operators complete preventative maintenance tasks. By embedding preventative maintenance alarms directly into the system workflow, operators must complete them before they can move onto the next nest.

Supervisors and Operators

By adding shop monitors, your supervisors can quickly check on each machine from any computer to verify the order and machine status, from maintenance to operating parameters. This, in turn, ensures that your shop equipment is running smoothly and at peak performance, and saves you from emergency maintenance.

Also, with an easy-to-use interface, supervisors have a visual incentive to reach their productivity goals for each day and week. There is a special, joyful, feeling that comes from seeing a well-organized schedule with all green dashboards.

For operators, OnRamp ERP and shop monitors create engagement by showing their results in real-time. Operators can quickly see what they have done and what they have to do. Like hitting a high-score or beating your peers, there is joy from a well-run job. OnRamp ERP keeps the attention of your machine operators better than any other ERP/ Nesting software, which results in smoother operations, and fewer problems arising.

Connected Customers

With OnRamp ERP and the customer portal, customers will have a view into what is going on with their order. And with better scheduling, you can quickly respond to any customer requests, like:

  • Drop requests
  • Quality issues
  • Rush orders

All this with minimal or no impact to your production schedule.

With knowledge of where in the production cycle their order is, your sales and customer service teams can easily respond to customer demands. All because they can track every part routing step from the moment the order is created to when it has been received.

All-in-One

With manufacturing, even the smallest data discrepancy can cause delays, wasted materials, manpower, and money. Writing things down on paper is just waiting for user error. On the other hand, data transfers between different software systems can be rife with errors. And as you know, any error leads to contacting support in a cat-and-mouse blame-game of who told what to who.

With OnRamp ERP, there is just one system. No matter what is being updated, no matter where, all your changes are in real-time and always available to whomever needs them.

Conclusion

OnRamp ERP was created to tackle the challenge that is nesting integration and add a necessary tool that was missing in the fabrication industry. Time, capital, and effort were poured in to make something that saves those same resources tenfold with:

  • Reduced labor costs
  • Foreseeable downtime
  • Avoidable bottlenecks
  • Improved efficiency
  • Integration with CAD software
  • Integration with nesting software
  • Automated tasks

OnRamp ERP works with partners like yourself with the goal of making manufacturing more efficient, easier to use, and easier to teach.

By integrating nesting into their manufacturing value chain, OnRamp ERP users have achieved significant business improvements, such as:

Nesting Benefits

Those are real saving that generate actual competitive benefits and an improved bottom line. And to help you get started quickly and with your best foot forward, OnRamp’s consulting team has decades of combined experience in manufacturing and implementing proven management methodologies that will improve your bottom line. Whatever you make, we can help you make it better.

Agree/ Disagree? Tell us what you think below!

Author

  • Paul Henriques

    Paul Henriques is the current Manager for the Documentation and Training team at OnRamp Solutions Inc. Paul has over 15 years of experience in writing training material and documentation for various software companies. Having had to learn OnRamp ERP to better document it’s features and write training material; Paul is constantly stunned by the amount of thought that goes into each feature and the capabilities that are within the program, with features for all the various business units of a manufactory. Paul spends most of his free time keeping up to date on all the latest news and best practices for the manufacturing sector. Paul’s favorite manufacturing quote: “There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.” – Henry Ford

Comments

One thought on “9 Ways OnRamp ERP Improves Nesting”

  1. Generally excellent Article with loads of helpful data. I anticipate reading many more articles about Wow, what a great blog post! Your site has given the best data. This information is excellent. Your website is amazing and wonderful to visit.

Leave a Comment

pattern

Let Our Experts Answer Your Questions

For more information about how OnRamp ERP software can add value to your business fill in the contact form below. A member of our support team will contact you within 1 business day to discuss any questions you have.

    or call us now!
    +1 (905) 901-5020

    Start the collaboration with us while figuring out the best solution based on your needs.

    Head Office : 10114 ON-26 Unit 2, Collingwood, ON L9Y 3Z1 , info@onramp-solutions.com
    Location Icon
    View on Google map