Lectra recently hosted a seminar for upholstered furniture professionals at its Bordeaux-Cestas campus in France.
Structured around the theme “24 hours”, the seminar brought together over 50 participants from 13 countries. Throughout the event, which centered on following, in real time, the upholstery manufacturing process for an armchair, from initial design sketch to production of the finalized cut parts, guests were encouraged to share their experiences and best practices on investing in new technology and the benefits it brings to their manufacturing processes.
The seminar was organized into three sections: Styling and Costing; Product Development and Industrialization; and Production of Cut Parts.
The 24-hour countdown began with an overview of the latest trends in furniture design given by Stanislas Joly from Sylvain Joly Design (France).
With the help of a 3D, collaborative worktable provided by Immersion, CAD engineers used the 2D/3D DesignConcept Furniture solution to demonstrate the time and cost-saving advantages of virtual prototypes for the styling and costing phases of manufacturing.
Marcin Błażewicz, Vice President of IMS Sofa (Poland), shared how the adoption of DesignConcept revolutionized his company’s design process and is continuing to change the way they do business. By using virtual prototypes, “we avoid errors and incorrectly developed products that will just end up sitting in the corner of the factory because no one wants them,” he explains.
During the event, customers witnessed the full product development of the armchair’s interior (wooden structure and foam) components, as well as the leather and fabric upholstery, using Lectra’s industrialization and pre-production software.
Guests also learned how valuable an automated cutting room can be for optimizing production, increasing material savings, and maintaining consistent product quality through demonstrations of Lectra’s leather and fabric cutting solutions, Versalis® and Vector®.
“Investing in the Versalis system has made our production process go more smoothly and allows us to produce more efficiently than we did before,” says Else-Marie Rønning, Production Engineer at Ekornes (Norway). “The waste has gone down by 5-6% and the productivity has increased,” adds Leif-Jarle Aure, Technical Manager.
Paolo Pavanello, Plant Manager at Cassina (Italy), also emphasized the opportunities that willingness to change can provide for manufacturers. Cassina decided to invest in the last Vector cutting solution after an intensive audit project performed by Lectra showed how the Vector could help the company optimize their production processes. Not only did their operations improve, they also recorded a return on their investment much earlier than planned. “The results surpassed our expectations,” says Paolo Pavanello.
“This event was a fantastic opportunity for our customers and prospects to gain new insights and discover new approaches to improve their manufacturing processes. Going through the entire process of designing and developing an armchair then producing the cut parts, was a big hit with the participants,” says Céline Choussy-Bedouet, Marketing Director, Lectra.
