LONDON — July 18, 2017 — Based on its recent analysis of the automotive leather-cutting equipment market, Frost & Sullivan has conferred Lectra with the 2017 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Leadership.
Lectra has leveraged more than 10 years of experience in connected manufacturing to offer Versalis®, an innovative digital solution designed to cut leather without compromise on quality. Featuring a powerful automatic nesting system for overall improvements in efficiency, the fully automated solution enables automotive leather suppliers to cut costs, improve productivity and minimize waste while also establishing a pathway to value-added Industry 4.0 processes.
Currently, almost 90 percent of leather used for automotive applications is cut using manual die presses, which require designers to build a physical prototype and finalize the design through trial and error. Lectra offers a fully digitalized leather solution from prototyping to cut parts — when used in combination with Lectra’s 3D prototyping and pattern-making software, Versalis digital leather cutting solution enables a 12-16 week reduction in development and launch cycles for vehicle seating models.
During the leather-cutting phase, the latest release of Versalis LeatherSuite allows automotive leather suppliers to achieve up to 15-percent greater productivity. Lectra’s end-to-end automotive leather offering furthermore guarantees optimal uptime through an extensive worldwide support network of field engineers and technical experts.
“Lectra focuses on a consultative approach that allows it to fully understand the customer’s needs before building a solution comprising software, hardware, consulting, training, and after-sales support,” said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Kamalesh Mohanarangam. “Lectra’s equipment is fitted with more than 200 sensors that predict failure and immediately report issues to its call centers. This product feature and service has resulted in 98 percent uptime and very fast mean time to repair.”
Although digital leather cutting solutions are an investment, leather cutters and Tier-1 suppliers have begun to recognize the value of these products. On average, Lectra’s solutions help customers achieve up to 7-percent savings on leather compared to manual die-press methods by minimizing human error and variability in the cutting room. A benchmark test of leather trim cutting for door panels demonstrated a 3.5-percent gain in material made possible by Versalis’ superior nesting capabilities compared to the customer’s yield using manual nesting with die press machines, representing potential savings of 9 million euros per year.
Versalis is the fruit of significant R&D investment for the company, which has always made reinvestment of capital a priority. As part of a transformational plan, Lectra spent more than 50 million euros in investments between 2011 and 2015. With Lectra’s new strategy focusing on supporting their customers’ transition to Industry 4.0 standards, Lectra will increase the share of revenues dedicated to R&D to 10 percent for the period from 2017 to 2019, representing a rise of about 50 percent between 2016 and 2019.
“Digitalization opens up a range of opportunities, from improving operations to building new business models. The emergence of Industry 4.0 and better capabilities for mass production has enabled large-scale personalization and a more profitable manufacturing set-up,” noted Kamlaesh Mohanarangam. “More than 10 years of experience in IoT connectivity for industry gives Lectra a tremendous competitive advantage as increasing numbers of suppliers adopt digitalized processes and transition to Industry 4.0 standards.”
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality and is gaining rapid market acceptance. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it supports.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
Posted July 18, 2017
Source: Lectra
