High-tech cutters trim costs of fabric and labor
CAD nesting yields 5 percent fabric savings while it “de-skills” the process
By Anna Thibodeaux
Want more yield in upholstered fabric?
Everyone does, but upholstery movers and shakers are especially marveling at labor savings, while reducing fabric and leather costs by up to 5 percent thanks to software advances in computer-assisted manufacturing.
At Ladd Upholstery Group in Hickory, N.C., Wayne Stewart, senior vice president of operations and finance, says the latest development in fabric cutters is automated nesting with more simplified CAD or computer-assisted designing, which requires a less sophisticated operator. Also, he says there’s been considerable progress in “match cutting” — matching pieces with complex patterns.
“We’ve gained a lot in terms of yield,” Stewart says, whose company’s gone through generations of equipment. “By using CAD to nest our patterns, we generally pick up a three to five percent yield savings in fabric and something close to that in leather.”
Fabric is the most significant cost in upholstered products, he says. For example, a Clayton Marcus sofa takes $75 to $85 in fabric and it’s up to $500 if it’s leather.
Ladd Upholstery, a 1,500-employee operation selling one million units of upholstered furniture yearly, uses Lectra cutters, which Stewart says can do the work of three to five manual cutters.
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Stewart also says the software and equipment that is becoming increasingly easier to operate means fewer highly-skilled workers are needed to run it. That translates into overhead savings and less worries with today’s labor shortage. He adds it can take up to a year to train a highly-skilled worker in pattern and fabric layout and cutting.
Lectra Systems in France, Gerber Technology in Tolland, Conn., and Investronica Inc. in Spain are among major international companies specializing in CAD, CAM (computer assisted manufacturing) and CIM (computer integrated manufacturing).
Fabric cutters are being designed to produce upholstered seating faster and more inexpensively to meet the market trend toward mass customization or special orders, says Peter Tredwin, vice president of marketing and sales with Gerber Technology. It also must save on labor and save space.
“Computers help tailor the machine to the material,” says Tredwin, whose company’s main business is designing software for the latest high-tech, automated cutters.
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The technology is all going digital, automated and geared toward mass customization or tailor-made furniture, he explains. At the same time, despite it becoming more technical, it’s becoming faster.
Gerber and Lectra executives both say there especially has been substantial technical headway in cutting leather more efficiently.
Software innovations are making leather cutting more affordable and practical, which, in turn, reduces leather furniture prices, Tredwin says. Hides are scanned, flaws and score marks are identified and the hide more precisely cut for best use and less waste.
“You need very sophisticated computers to see the holes, variances in color, marks and scratches and changes in the periphery shape of the hide,” he says. “This technology is relatively new, having been out only a couple of years. It’s emerging technology.”
The technology employs a series of cameras with rapid photographing, recording the color, flaws and thickness of every hide. It digitally reconstructs the hide in the computer, aligning recommended cutting patterns like a jigsaw puzzle, avoiding flaws, minimizing waste and making the best matches for color and strength.
With speed also being a key factor, Tredwin says Gerber equipment is suite or assembly line oriented.
Lectra President David Siegelman affirmed new advances in leather cutting.
“Until someone can invent a square cow, you’re going to have to cut each hide individually,” Siegelman says. “Demand to automate this process is growing and we’ve had some big success in that market.”
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CADCAM technology, which enables manufacturers to design “virtual prototypes” of their product is advancing, he explains. Because these are computer-generated images, a virtual prototype can be changed without delay, time or cost.
“The technique is so sophisticated that you can’t tell the difference between the virtual image and the actual chair,” Siegelman says. “This dramatically reduces the time and cost to introduce new styles, especially with delivery time becoming more crucial, and it increases sales.”
Virtual prototypes can be e-mailed to a customer or posted on a website like a catalog, he says.
Siegelman, like Stewart, agrees there also have been advances in automatically matching complex fabric patterns like stripes, plaids and motifs during cutting. This dramatically improves quality, speed and “de-skills” the process,” which eliminates the need for hard-to-find skilled labor.
“One cutting machine does the work of five to ten hand cutters,” he says.
Aided by a video camera on the cutting head, the cutting machine takes digital photos of the fabric and automatically aligns the parts as necessary, Siegelman says.
It’s all done digitally, which aligns with the industry’s two hottest topics - digitally designing and cutting, he says.
“Upholstered seating is our fastest growing market segment and the U.S. represents about twenty-five percent of our sales,” Siegelman says.
The industry’s consistently grown in the last five years, a trend that he foresees continuing. Siegelman also predicts continued growth for Lectra.
At Ladd Upholstery, a division of La-Z-Boy, Stewart says this rapidly evolving technology promises even more.
They’re using CAD in research and development instead of making product prototypes, he says. They’re also closely scrutinizing product flow and software capable of managing it, as well as using the Internet more to communicate with suppliers and retailers to better forecast market trends.
Stewart says all these technological advances combined is making it possible to design and release a product in three to four months, and eventually weeks, instead of up to a year.
He adds, “It’s about making the right things at the right time.”
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