Daimler Freightliner PEP Success

Q: (Geoff) When PEP was re-nesting your parts from NCELL, would you say that PEP increased the sheet metal utilization by 20%?

A: (Seth) – If we look at individual examples – we would say easily 20% in savings… More in some cases and less in other cases and I think a 20% increase in material savings is an accurate statement. The funny part is your team only used 11% on the RI which is extremely conservative.

Statement (David Grant) – I just did an actual nest comparison based on sigmanest vs. PEP and PEP won all of the nesting comparisons vs. our sister company nests they sent me.

Q: (Geoff) Did you find the PEP staff to be a professional in both the software and lasers.

A:( David) I would say very professional – Nick really knows his stuff on both the software and lasers. No question about it your entire team is well versed in the manufacturing world.

A: (Seth chimes in): I absolutely echo that your team was very professional. EX – a guy that came to train us for sigmanest on the turret press, sigmanest spent 2/3rd of their time on the phone trying to make their software work… and as you well know sigmanest didn’t work out there… Your team didn’t have any of this.. the trainer could handle all requests on the spot.

Q: (Geoff) would you say that our PEP technicians acted as consultants for you on these implementation of software and your old Co2 lasers, and your new Mitsubishi fiber lasers?

A: (Seth) Absolutely- we told PEP Techs what we did, and they took what we were doing, built on it and gave us back a better product and process.

Q:( Geoff): Did your team become more efficient because of PEP’s consultation.

A: (Seth) I think it’s a very fair statement as it allowed us a single point of contact now… Chip now does the laser nesting for 8 lasers which is a success in its own right if you think about it, we used to have 3-4 people doing laser programming and now we have consolidated that with Chip who is a laser technician. We took the engineering technicians out of the equation. Its just the laser technician who is a hourly shop floor employee and is doing the laser nesting for the entire facility and has the tools the do it with PEP!

Statement- (David) “I described the change from NCell to PEP as going from a flip phone to a smart phone.”

Q:(Geoff) Are the 3 major elements of the PEP ROI Material savings, Increased throughput on the machine, and programming savings time?

For instance, you got rid of 3 guys in laser programming that could have easily cost you a combined 100k which would have paid for the software alone would it not?

A: (Seth): Yes absolutely, it’s feasible to say that the programmer savings alone paid for the software, but the material savings and machine time given back make up the biggest Part of the 1,500,000.00saved annually.

Q: (Geoff) How is the offsite support been? Have you found it to be everything you require and would come to expect?

A: (David) The GOTO meetings are awesome.. Something that invaluable to us, we call and within a half a day we have a call and meeting set up to walk us through the problem, whether is chips computer, engineers computer, install, PEP solicited help in every facet for their software, equipment and the machines. I think it’s great support.

Q: (Geoff) do you have anything to compare us too? Like a former cam system?

Statement (Seth): “well I will tell you what Geoff, I don’t get to far down in the minutia to the details of it but I took this job in 2010, and the NCell and the laser programming issues were a constant nagging issue with me on my job. Had a lot trouble trying to get NCell help, couldn’t get good service, they couldn’t help them improve bad situations or have them respond in a timely manner or come onsite. Since we have gone to PEP I don’t hear anything about the lasers anymore except for when they working or when they are not… That’s great to me as a manager I don’t want to have any nagging headaches. I know that is one thorn in my side that has sailed since we moved onto PEP. “

A: (David) – I sent Nick a question on Monday and he sent us a response with an answer within the hour.. that is what we have come to expect with PEP.

Q: (Geoff) I am curious did you notice off the top that PEP was able to run your machines faster, and did our techs show your team that the machines were running under the MFG recommended speeds based on issues you had with short line segments in your parts?

A: (David) when we first did the file transfer from our folder into the pep database, I don’t think we realized how many of our files had the short lines and splines and all that other stuff that slowed the laser down… of course the PEP software automatically cleaned it and now everything is fine and we are running at recommended speed rates. Prior to PEP we were slowing the laser down to compensate for these part related issues.

Q: (Geoff) Prior to PEP did anyone on your team mention to the laser operator to speed up to MFG recommended…

A: (David) Prior to pep I don’t think we should have sped it up. Would and did cause to many problems so we just left the lasers running slower for confidence in the cut quality.

Q: (Geoff) Radiused corners? Did NCell put a MFG recommended radius on the parts to help reduce exact stops in corners?

A: (Seth) No we ran the parts exactly as they dxf had it.

Q: (Geoff ) Do you recall with NCell having to out put a full head raise for 100% of the external moves.

A: (Seth) Yes it would pick the head up on every external move, and sometimes it would pick the head up, move a quarter of an inch and put the head back down?

Q: (Geoff) Would it be an accurate statement that with PEP you are running with the head down 90% of the time successfully.

A: (Seth) YES that is a very accurate statement.

Q: (Geoff) Your team agrees that PEP helped increase the feed rate and be more productive in machine time by 15% minimum.

A: (Seth) YES as a minimum. Heck Maybe 20-25%

Q: (Geoff) Have you upped the anny with common line cutting since moving to PEP?

A: (David) Yessir that is a common practice now…Chip just leaves it turned common line cutting turned on and lets PEP do its thing. Nobidy does it better than PEP.

Further elaborating on this… We have minimal scrap now/ just little rows on the bottom of the sheet… the skeletons are bare bones and you don’t know what the heck it was cutting because there isn’t enough material left to identify what parts were cut.

A: (Seth) We have seen 20-30% increase in throughput with your common line cutting and 15% in material savings on parts that can be combined at kerf.

PEP Has driven a lot of changes on the shop floor.. it used to be 1 operator to 1 laser, but now its 1 operator to a 3 laser system with unloaders.

And now Lights out operations were able to be achieved after full implementation of PEP.

Statement (David) – One of the things I love about PEP is that you have control of the variables that help us get the highest efficiencies.

Q: (Geoff) did Ncell or sigmanest give you those options?

A: (David) NO

Q: (Geoff) How was PEP as far as ERP integration was concerned? Was our knowledge helpul in the integration process?

A: (Seth) Taurus was very valuable and amazing with the work in process and materials. He was a really great asset to us.

Q: (Geoff) My understanding was the Taurus was extremely helpful with scenarios that your own IT technicians did not have the answers too… Is this true?

A: (Seth) he did, he was very much a help to our IT technicians. He pointed out things that caused issues and delays, specifically with the refresh of the data base and when the snapshot of the data was being snapped.

Q: (Geoff) Did PEP Technology’s WIP integration help you manage your existing work orders and help with ON TIME delivery?

A: (Seth) PEP providing us with the visibility of all the work orders played heavily in improving on time delivery.

Q: (Geoff) In your experience in Manufacturing have either of you seen a product that created this dramatic of an ROI of 1,500,000.00 million dollars annually?

A: PEP is a diamond in the rough and anyone who is smart enough to implement it will not only see the savings immediately, but get connected with an incredibly talented technical and support staff. We love dealing with everyone on your team.