Automation and customization hand in hand for increased capacity

Tailoring companies do everything they can to adapt the work to their employees. In this way, people who cannot enter the regular employment circuit are also given real opportunities. But that is the only difference; just like other metal companies, the money for new machines comes from their own pockets and not from subsidies. Custom fabrication company WAAK did not take an overnight decision to invest in a fiber laser with tower warehouse. In choosing LVD, Metal & Assembly Director Kristof Casier is confident that capacity and continuity will be assured for years to come.

WAAK (Kuurne) can call itself the largest employer in the broad region around Kortrijk with approximately 1,900 flexible employees. Its activities are divided into five pillars: Metal & Assembly, Electrical Wiring Systems, Conditioning & Logistics, Green & Clean and Inhouse. Metaalvak had an interview with Kristof Casier, director of Metaal & Assemblage. "On an area of 35,000 m², about 200 custom workers are at work here every day. They are committed to taking care of our customers from A to Z. In pure sheet metal work we are not distinctive. We make the difference because we can also weld, paint, assemble and mount under the same roof. Add to that the activities of the other departments and we are a one-stop shop for finished devices and products, including wiring."

Making work as feasible and as ergonomic as possible

Kristof Casier (left) of WAAK and Claude Stragier of LVD: "An additional benefit is the Touch control, which is so intuitive that our custom workers can handle it smoothly."

The biggest challenge on the shop floor, according to Casier, is to break down the process into pieces in such a way that manufacturability is guaranteed for the custom workers. WAAK's core competency is therefore to make difficult work easy. This ensures quality for the end customer. "Our products are very diverse, from mailboxes to designer chairs, from charging poles to
hoods. Then you have to be able to structure the work in such a way that your employees continue to see the forest for the trees. We want to make sure it stays workable and invest in tools to make work as feasible and as ergonomic as possible." Although custom work largely involves manual labor, on the shop floor at WAAK, it still goes hand in hand with automation. "Take a welding robot, for example. Welding requires a lot of technical expertise and skills. Like any metal company, we struggle to find good welders. But putting in the pieces for a welding robot, though, can be done perfectly by our people."

New installation LVD safeguarding the future

Another example of such an automation project is the addition of a new laser cutting machine with tower magazine. "When you know that the metal department is growing by 10 to 20% every year you can understand why our existing CO₂-laser could no longer sustain the capacity. We needed a reliable machine and ditto tower magazine that provided quality, job security maintenance friendliness and ease of use." The Phoenix FL-3015 with a tower magazine from Starmatik turned out to be the best possible choice, according to Casier. "90% of the work we perform on the laser is in thin plate. So the choice of fiber technology was obvious. We saw few differences between the different suppliers as far as the laser cutting machine was concerned, but for us the full picture counted. With the simplicity and robustness of the automation solution LVD proposed combined with the optimization capabilities offered by their CADMAN^® software brings, we assured ourselves of a bright future."

Gains in speed, quality and efficiency

For the tower warehouse, every inch to below the roof was utilized, resulting in 37 spaces for raw slabs, finished pieces and the place frame.

For the tower warehouse, every inch was utilized up to under the roof, resulting in 37 spaces for raw slabs, finished pieces and the plate skeleton. Moreover, the implementation itself went flawlessly. Casier is very pleased with the new installation and the cooperation with LVD. WAAK no longer has to outsource laser work and can cut three to four times faster than before. "We also have to deburr less due to the higher cut quality. An additional benefit is the Touch control, which is so intuitive that our employees  handle it smoothly. We also had it installed immediately on the existing CO₂-laser, also from LVD, by the way. But the strongest asset is the software. It forces us to first think about our workflow and how we can optimize it. That takes a little more time, but the efficiency gains we can get out of that will be huge."   ν