Case Study:

JCB CAB
SYSTEMS
For eight years, Rugeley based JCB Cab

LANTEK SAVES Systems Limited have been building

cabs for the JCB product range,
supplying the UK based plants in
MATERIAL AT JCB Rocester, Uttoxeter and Cheadle.
The company produces around 140 cabs
CAB SYSTEMS per day, ranging in size from 1 metre wide
for micro machines to 2.5 metres wide for
the largest diggers. Each cab is fabricated
and assembled to suit the individual build
requirements of each JCB plant.
Case Study

Stephen Dunion, Materials Manager for

JCB Cab Systems:

“The evaluation took place at our Cheadle

Earthmovers site - we choose Lantek
Expert for its ease of use and dynamic
nesting capabilities.”

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 At JCB Cab Systems, the world steel shortage
focused attention on the efficient use of
material. It uses sheet steel ranging in
thickness from 1.2 mm to 15 mm. During
its seven day week, four shift pattern, it
consumes around 7,000 sheets, producing
more than 40,000 piece parts every week.

The sheet material is cut on JCB Cab Systems

four laser profiling machines which range in
power from 1.8KW up to 3.2 KW and are fitted
with 3m x 1.5m beds with automatic loading
equipment. Initially, the sheet nesting
was static, making it easy to fulfil weekly
requirements with fixed nests that
corresponded to known groups of products.
Whilst this simplified the logistics of
controlling parts flow, the disadvantage for
JCB Cab Systems was that these static nests
did not maximise the material usage.

The potential savings in material costs from

dynamic nesting of the weekly product mix
drove the company to evaluate different
software solutions. The company has four
weeks advance visibility of requirements
from the other UK based JCB plants, nesting
each week’s production at the end of the
preceding week. He elaborated, “There are
about 50 top level assemblies, each of which
can contain up to 150 different parts. Our SAP
system identifies the individual components
required and uses a Microsoft Excel file to
pass the data into our two Lantek Expert
systems where nesting takes place.”

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The ability to nest the week’s requirements is
made possible by the transfer of this information.
Once the nesting is complete, the Lantek system
is able to feed information back to SAP about
material utilisation and machine run times.
Stephen Dunion explained, “The nesting is quite
complex. There are groups of parts which will
not nest well together, and additionally there are
different thicknesses and grades of material to
be considered.” On completion of each nest the
Lantek system automatically generates NC code
to drive the laser profiling machines.

Two manufacturing engineers work (one on a

part-time basis) on the Lantek systems. One
enters CAD geometry to keep up with the ongoing
programme of design improvements at JCB,
while the second concentrates on the nesting
process. Nesting is carried out using Lantek’s
algorithms, supplemented by manual nesting, to
fully optimise the results for a full sheet. Stephen
Dunion said, “Savings have been achieved
through improved material utilisation of the
dynamically nested proportion of parts, although
this has introduced different problems for JCB
Cab Systems.” Each nest is unique, so it is difficult
to identify individual parts and their subsequent
route around the shop floor once they come off
the laser profiling machine, making the control
of the flow of parts much more complex. To
solve this, each component is etched with a code
during laser cutting, which indicates the product
group and next operation. Whilst this results in a
reduction in laser productivity, this is offset by an
improvement in material utilization.

Currently Lantek are working with JCB Cab

Systems’ SAP developers to further automate
the integration between the systems and move
to the next level of material utilisation with more
advanced nesting techniques. Stephen Dunion
concluded, “The system has yet to completely
fulfil our expectations, but has become a strategic
element of our parts manufacturing process.”

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 Case Study

ARGENTINA- BRASIL- MÉXICO- CHILE- USA- DEUTSCHLAND- ESPAÑA- FRANCE- ITALIA- POLSKA- PORTUGAL- UNITED KINGDOM- CHINA- INDIA- TURKIYË- KOREA- JAPAN
 FACT SHEET

COMPANY NAME JCB Cab Systems Ltd.

ACTIVITY/INDUSTRIAL Excavators
SECTOR

LANTEK SOLUTION CAD/CAM 2D

Manufacturing Management
Operator Job Control and Validation

LICENSES 2 Lantek Expert

2 Lantek Manager
1 Lantek Wos

MACHINES TRUMPF L3030

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