Omaha, NE - Lozier Corporation manufactures store fixtures (see photo) in six manufacturing facilities across the U.S., occupying 3 million sq feet of manufacturing and warehouse space. For fabricating the company has 21 CNC punch and laser machines, some with automatic loading/unloading equipment or incorporated in an FMS system. In 2005, at the Omaha plant, the company embarked on a benchmark test of JETCAM (www.jetcam.com) against other systems that could support its range of machines. A selection of existing parts was used to test nesting efficiency, with JETCAM’s High Performance Rectangular Nesting module delivering a four percent lead over its closest competitor on punched parts. With this module, laser efficiency was also greatly improved. Lozier standardized on JETCAM Expert, along with the Remote Control Processing module and ordered licenses for all facilities. Programming labor for both punch and laser machines was dramatically reduced, machine operators on the shop floor use it to reassign a schedule for components originally assigned to a particular machine to a different machine.
The benefits the company has experienced include: driving 21 punching and laser machines across five machine brands, replacing six CAM systems with one, laser nests up to five percent more efficient and ongoing material savings on punching nests of up to 11.4 percent, part programming time reduced dramatically, machine cycle time reduced by 5 percent, and automatic nesting time reduced by 50 percent.
Also, all part, nesting, and NC files are now in a single location serving all plants remotely, software maintenance decreased by 40 percent, and the system is expected to pay for itself in less than 12 months.
Among the machines supported are the followng lasers: one Bystronic ByStar 3015 in an FMS/Tower system, nine Mazak NTX48, one Mazak STX48, one Mazak NTX510, and two Mazak STX510.