As manufacturing businesses grow, the cost savings that could be made by organizing manufacturing efforts grow. Methods that were once acceptable for smaller jobs become unmanageable in larger jobs (which are increasingly being undertaken by ENDUROFRAME licensees). This is where batching comes in.

One streamlining effort some licensees have chosen to pursue is to purchase additional rollforming equipment that is dedicated (for example) to truss components, and they also have corresponding downstream equipment such as truss fabrication tables.

This makes a lot of sense because the manufacturing cells can specialize in manufacturing trusses, and therefore truss fabrication itself becomes more efficient.

But in order for streamlining efforts such as this to turn into cost savings, a high level of organization is required to schedule production flows. Each manufacturing cell should be given what it needs in the optimal sequence and at the appropriate time, otherwise the potential efficiencies gained by specialized equipment can quickly erode away.

In the most simple terms, Batching is used to subdivide Orders into smaller “batches”, so that different parts of an Order can be manufactured:

• On different machines,
• At different times, or
• In different sequences

It can also be used purely for organization purposes – e.g. some businesses prefer to divide an Order into Roof/Panel/Joist because it allows the scheduler to give simple verbal instructions to the Rollformer operator:

“Make the Roof now, we’ll do Panel and Joist tomorrow”

— scheduler

Without creating separate batches, the Rollformer operator has to make sense of this instruction from the schedule, and figure out which parts in a Cutting List should be rollformed and which should not.

What is a Batch?

A batch is a list of Parts. When an order is created, all parts are in a single “default” batch. But so as to better organize an Order you might choose to make additional batches and move Parts to them.

Each batch tell us:

• Which parts are in the batch?
• What sequence will parts within the batch be rollformed in?
• On which Rollformer will those parts in the batch be made?

In the future, we may look at adding date/time scheduling to ENDUROHUB, so a batch would specify when parts would be made.

Common Uses

There are many scenarios where batching can be helpful. Some examples of where batching could be used:-

1. You want to make all of the walls and floor joists for level 1 but not for level 2 as they do not need to be delivered until next week.
2. You want to group all of the C90 1.0mm studs from a single job into a batch so they can be rollformed after another job that also has C90 1.0mm studs.
3. You have several rollformers that are dedicated to manufacturing certain parts. For example; truss chords will be made on one machine, but webs will be made on another rollformer from longest to shortest.