As the Director of Software Development, I am responsible for delivering the latest features to our customers. Since we provide software solutions for manufacturing businesses, helping them operate more efficiently, I often notice striking similarities between software development and the manufacturing process.

With an array of newly added powerful features, ZOOMFAB MSS® manufacturing supervisory system takes on effective production management and productivity improvement roles not available by most ERP systems. ZOOMFAB Express Estimator®; Five years of development is finally culminating in the introduction ZOOMFAB Express Estimator®, the price estimating software. ZOOMFAB Service®; Bridging the missing link between the customers, their machines and the service provider, ZOOMFAB introduces ZOOMFAB Service® SaaS monitoring, reporting and communication tool. 

When I started my sheet metal job shop, I had no money (sounds familiar?), and I had to borrow it initially. So, I had to choose wisely what machinery I purchased. My initial focus was on functionality, ensuring I could do the work, and then on capacity so I could handle the volumes I dreamed about.

Depending on the material thickness and nesting technique, manual removal of parts from a processed sheet is hard, time-consuming work, often impacting not only the laser machine utilization but also causing production delays. Furthermore, manual sorting requires labor, causes injuries and produces many rejects caused by part separation and removal. 

When I started my sheet metal job shop, I had no money (sounds familiar?), and I had to borrow it initially. So, I had to choose wisely what machinery I purchased. My initial focus was on functionality, ensuring I could do the work, and then on capacity so I could handle the volumes I dreamed about.

We all know very well, that profit is not made by just getting goods out of the door. They must be manufactured with planned productivity in mind.

Life of batteries warry depending on two factors – frequency of reporting (machines with frequent cycles) and an environment (ambient temperature, connection distance, noise)

ZOOMFAB is know for its user friendliness and practicality. To make it even more useful, we are introducing new unique feature to help the business owner(s) and  managers, to better understand previous week’s production performance and  presenting them with automated reporting tool showing the most critical data. 

Every Monday morning, ZOOMFAB system will automatically forward an analysis report to the administrator assigned user email addresses.

For a typical sheetmetal job-shop, if your price estimating is accurate enough and your sales and expenses are within the budget, PRODUCTIVITY is the single most influential factor directly affecting your profitability. Increasing productivity makes your company more competitive and profitable. Managing PRODUCTIVITY is the key to your SUCCESS.

As the sheetmetal fabrication industry is becoming more competitive, fabricators are turning to automation with the aim to eliminate bottlenecks typically associated with machine configuration and tooling setup. For press brake, this means typically adding an AUTOMATIC TOOL CHANGER (ATC).

In recent years, efforts have been made in the industrial world to promote the ideas of CONNECTIVITY and VISIBILITY

I am glad to welcome you to the THIRD EDITION of our 2021 ZOOMFAB® newsletter. 

WHERE do you MAKE and where do you LOSE MONEY? I have no doubt, that if you have a sheetmetal or machining job-shop, you have been looking for the answer to this question for years, and probably still are… 

Theoretically, ZOOMFAB^® can be deployed in almost any manufacturing sector, but our true strength is in the knowledge of the sheetmetal fabrication industry and the flexible production machinery it uses. And when we talk about true flexibility, there is one machine in particular, which is a true champion. It is the punch laser combination machine. 

I have no doubt, that if you have a sheetmetal or machining job-shop, you have been looking for the answer to this question for years, and probably still are… 

The way software tools are being sold today is shifting from one-time licensing to a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription, which brings up a number of important questions about benefits and security.

Zoomfab version history

We have been in the sheetmetal industry for 35 years but can't remember a wave of investment of the current magnitude. With a higher degree of automation, increased processing speeds, the ability to operate flexible hours unattended and increased capacity, this sector will become a lot more competitive.

ZOOMFAB® now features 3rd monitoring dashboard layout, which was created especially for shop floor screens. Option to select which machines will be shown on the screen and in which order, allows complete flexibility in screen organizationWe created a new screen design for the factory shop floor which can be used in landscape, or better in “airport” style vertical arrangement. They keep everybody on their toes and significantly improve the communication between staff and management. 

ZOOMFAB® has developed a unique solution to precisely monitor laser cutting gas flow rate and consumption.  As cost of cutting gas can be significant, especially the nitrogen, knowing the true flow rate will help user to determine accurate hourly rates for cutting different materials

Majority of job-shops understand the importance of having correctly calculated hourly rates for their individual manufacturing operations, but large percentage of them don’t calculate the hourly rates periodically or at all. There are number of reasons for it

By comparing data collected from the large pool of machinery monitored by ZOOMFAB in Europe and Australia, we identify the best performing sheetmetal machinery you should look at in 2021.

It’s hard to believe what 2020 prepared for us. And while most people are happy that year is over, there have been some silver linings which are worth celebrating.

Following intense development, there is so much more we are preparing to release in 2021

ZOOMFAB^® development is very dynamic and we are releasing improvement updates every 2 weeks, so you can enjoy using it even

What If?^® module, a truly unique, innovative and intelligent tool, which allows simulation of variety of production scenarios

Adding to the already powerful automated collection of machine utilization data, we now also identify setup time and production process interruption, which are added to real-time visibility and analytics.

Spending 1 to 2 million on a new laser cutting system can certainly inject some anxiety into your life.

What if your anxiety could be removed? Not by giving you the money, haha! But by giving..

Want to avoid "Volkswagen syndrome"? Know why your laser cutting machine REALLY consumes and how it compares to manufacturer's specifications or other machines? You will be suprised.

Yes, it can! How? Two ways. Long and expensive, or affordable and NOW.

Do you have a mixture of new and older machinery, different brands and substantial amount of labor-intensive operations? If you want to update to a...  

It was at that time when we had just finished installation of ZOOMFAB® at OMR Spa, one of the largest Italian automotive component manufacturers in Remedello (Lombardy) and at Belia Sarl, sheetmetal fabricator in San Giorgio in Bosco (Veneto), when hardly anybody spoke about the virus. 

Machine operators and other factory workers know their workplace very well and they will easily notice even the smallest changes in their working environment. So when ZOOMFAB technicians open the machine cabinets and start installing the IoT sensors, employees usually rise their eyebrows in discomfort.

Anyone who you ask for a definition on this subject will give you a complex and ambiguous answer which often lacks a simple and clear explanation of what this entails and what are the benefits to a metal fabricating job-shop like yours. 

If you are engaged in manufacturing, you very likely already know about Material resources planning (MRP), Enterprise resource planning (ERP), Manufacturing executions system (MES), Manufacturing operations management (MOM), Overall equipment efficiency (OEE), Key performance indicator (KPI) and other terms. But have you heard about OODA loop and its role in manufacturing?