Converting Industry
Attribute-Based Scheduling
S-Plan® does not need a product structure. Many customers, particularly in the converting industry, successfully use the system without any notion of a product whatsoever. For instance, instead of defining a product code for 80 gsm paper, green, 450 x 610 mm in size, watermarked, cut to register, packed in reams and palletized, with S-Plan® one can define properties that characterise a product (such as color, basis weight width, length, watermark, sheeting type, packing type and palletization), then define an appropriate route, through fundamental operations. Each operation can have its own units of measure and its own waste figures.
- Roll stock optimisation
- Sheeting Optimisation
- Metallising Process - Special logic has been introduced in S-Plan® to handle the requirements of the metallising process in terms of minimum and maximum curing times.
Stock Roll Conversion Module
The Stock Roll Conversion Module, is an optional X-Trim® module that is specifically designed to address those trim situations where the primary rolls are not obtained through a fixed-width process such as a paper machine, but are obtained from external suppliers, typically in a variety of sizes:
Stock Roll Editor
The first step is to define the available stock rolls, through the editor: Typically this information is picked up automatically from an external system via ODBC links. If available, date information can be used so that older stock rolls are consumed first.
Anvil Constraints
In many winders / slitters there are anvils that are pre-configured with the knives. The constraints associated with these anvils are defined in the following form:
The weighting in relation to the knife changes is for guiding the optimisation in terms of the relation between the cost (time) of an anvil change compared to a single knife movement.
Anvil & Knife Change Minimisation
The two screenshots below show the effects of applying Greycon's advanced anvil and knife change minimisation to a solution:
As you can see the anvil changes have been reduced from four to two and the knife changes from 18 to 14.
Multiple Slitter / Winder Support
The system allows for multiple slitters and winders. Each individual pattern can be assigned to a specific winder / slitter. Anvil and knife change minimisation can be applied to each winder / slitter's schedule.
Stock Reel Conversion Option
This X-Trim option provides a dedicated stock reel editor (capable of handling jumbo reel stock, parent reel stock and even sheet stock to be guillotined down to the final sheet size) and facilities to assign solution patterns to individual stock reels.
The user may control the relationship between orders and stock items:
Stock reels may have three different types of faults:
- Normal faults, which are areas that cannot be used at all:
- Hi-Lo-Hi faults, which typically are areas of large caliper variation and therefore are exclusion zones for slitter knives:
- Full-width faults:
This module is typically used in situations where the primary production is separated from the slitting by a buffer.
