Dear PEP Technology,

I am very pleased to send you this acknowledgement letter regarding our experience with P.E.P.  

We purchased Sigmanest in October 2007 to program our Trumpf Laser and our water jet.

Sigmanest seemed to have more features for a lower initial cost than PEP.  It included inventory, remnant tracking, and a sheet metal transition which we felt would be very beneficial to us. 

Regretfully we found that Sigmanest did not have a

post-processor that worked properly “right out of the box”.   Furthermore, there were a lot of parameters, I believe, should have already been figured out by them. 

After six weeks of downtime and frustration, we believed that we had solved many of Sigma’s problems and we were ready to cut our first big job from a customer with which we have a very good relationship.  The software failed miserably! Our particular machine requires a slow lead-in for thicker materials.  The Sigmanest post was incapable of outputting the correct code to cut the material thus forcing us to run the job on the water jet, resulting in our losing money on the job.

The time came to make a decision.  Do we keep struggling to make Sigmanest work by investing more time or do we try different software in hopes that we can somehow recoup the losses?  We had 2 employees miss a week of work while attending the Sigmanest training class and a total of 6 weeks working out the bugs with the Sigmanest software.   Time was not all that we lost.   We also had lost several opportunities to sell our laser services out of the lack of confidence we had in the Sigmanest software.  At an average of one thousand dollars per day (which is a low estimate) in potential sales, Sigmanest had potentially cost us far more than thirty thousand dollars in “lost sales”. 

Because there were many issues left un-resolved we gave Sigmanest another call and they sent a tech into our facility to help us.   Needless to say, nothing was resolved.

The next day we decided to go ahead and purchase PEP.  I received the software package in two business days.  UPS came in at 9:30 AM. The P.E.P. Support Engineer worked with me over the internet to insure all went well.  At 4:30 PM, that same day, I posted out a program to the machine that worked. That’s less that one day to go from a non-working system to being able to cut parts.  That was amazing!  We weren’t without problems completely over the last two months, but when I have called P.E.P. for assistance on a technical problem or simply to ask a question about the software, the support department has been great!.

P.E.P. Technology Nest - The nest below is typical of our nesting results, thank you P.E.P.!

All in all we are very pleased with the P.E.P. experience as well as the service and support from your staff.  In hindsight, we should’ve paid the extra for “the good stuff” to start with.  It was an expensive lesson to learn as a company, but now with the past behind us we are looking to a long and fruitful year in 2008 and beyond. 

Sincerely, 

Garry Hattey

Laser Manager

Lake Shore Cutting Services