Lectra supports its customers by designing and developing cutting-edge solutions that combine software, equipment, data and services to make its offer the gateway to Industry 4.0.
The automotive industry currently faces a complex set of market dynamics: rising material and transport costs, reduced budgets, changing consumer expectations, increasing challenges related to CSR, etc. In this context, improving efficiency across the whole value chain has become a strategic priority for vehicle and equipment manufacturers.
With Industry 4.0, a new range of possibilities is opening up to businesses. The concept and its technologies bring in new value creation and cost control models based on synchronized, flexible and fast processes.
Céline Choussy, Lectra’s Chief Product Officer, explains: “The automotive sector, well aware of the competitiveness challenges associated with its digital transformation, is leading the way in terms of Industry 4.0. Productivity improvements and material savings are still possible in cutting rooms: with the launch of the Automotive Cutting Room 4.0 offer, we enable automotive manufacturers to take a further significant step towards operational excellence”.
The Automotive Cutting Room 4.0 offer is a set of solutions connected to one other: Vector, the fabric cutting equipment offering the best performance in the market; Empower, a new generation of digital services to leverage Vector's capabilities; Valia, the heart of the new offer, a software for preparing and scheduling production; and Algopex, an application for exploiting and capitalizing on all the data generated by the cutting room, so you can make the best decisions as quickly as possible.
Renaud Cellier, Assistant Director of the Covering Materials Business Unit at vehicle seat manufacturer Tesca, confirms: “Digitalization is a strategic axis in all our areas of activity, including the cutting rooms. The real-time display of key indicators and the performance analysis and improvement made possible by digitalization are essential to adapt to a volatile and uncertain economic environment. The Automotive Cutting Room 4.0 offer enables us to be more reactive and to optimize our performance, and gives us analyses and recommendations for improving the key performance indicators and efficiency of our cutting lines”.
Connecting up all the elements of the Automotive Cutting Room 4.0 offer delivers this unprecedented value and enables an unparalleled level of performance to be achieved. Nicolas Favreau, Lectra’s Automotive Marketing Strategy Director, explains: “When the whole cutting room process is digitalized, the data generated are centralized and accessible in real time, helping our customers to make the best decisions at every step of the production process. The benefits are huge. For example, the key performance indicators from the offer’s first users show productivity gains of around 5% and a reduction in material consumption of nearly 2%. That’s unheard of! These results, combined with the agility that the Automotive Cutting Room 4.0 brings and the complete process control, demonstrate the offer’s maximum relevance.”
