Aerospace & Composites: Manufacturing Yield vs. Kit Level Nesting Yield

Avner Ben-Bassat, President & CEO, Plataine Inc.

Abstract

Best of class manufacturers track their performance by measuring a set of key metrics for a variety of needs such as continuous improvement and bid (tender)-costing. Given the importance of these metrics, it is important to ask - are the correct metrics being used, and which potential savings are overlooked when measuring the wrong ones?

 

The topics of “material utilization” or “material savings” were the center of intense discussions and process evaluations conducted with dozens of manufacturers worldwide, specifically as it pertains to the composite materials storage, tracking, cutting and kitting. Effectively all manufacturers place a great emphasis on tracking their material yield. However, the vast majority of them measure the yield through the eyes of the Product/Kit-level nesting process. Such manufacturers measure their ‘kit-level nesting yield’, which is the total area of the parts in a kit divided by the area of the material used for the nest. In many cases, the nests are prepared once per kit and then stored for future use and reference.

By associating nesting with the product-level entity, this metric completely ignores the broader realities of manufacturing and the actual level of material utilization as driven by operational decisions such as scheduling of kits to cut, selection of raw material to use (including remnant utilization) and more. In fact, most manufacturers we meet are intuitively (and practically) aware that there is “additional waste in the process”, but they accept it as an unavoidable cost given the [lack of] systems and processes they currently have in place.

 

To realize the true utilization of material in production, it is important to look at the overall Manufacturing Yield, that is – the total material that becomes finished product, as a percentage of the total raw material purchased by the plant, also referred to as the ‘Buy to Fly’ ratio. This paper will focus on measuring material utilization during the nesting/cutting processes.

 

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