Lectra solidifies its position as an Industry 4.0 frontrunner with the reveal of two visionary solutions, Furniture on Demand by Lectra and Versalis® 2019, at the “Giving New Life to Furniture Manufacturing” event. Over 50 guests and industry experts from 12 countries convened at Lectra’s International Advanced Technology and Conference Center (IATC) in Bordeaux-Cestas, France to examine how radically and rapidly the furniture industry is changing. The opening keynote—a joint presentation by the Centre for Labor Studies (CSIL) and Lectra—detailed how customization, the experience economy, sustainability and evolutions in retail are driving furniture companies to reinvent themselves and their processes.
Over one-and-a-half days of demonstrations, presentations, workshops and customer testimonials, industry experts laid out how accelerating digital transformation and implementing Industry 4.0 principles will allow furniture manufacturers to meet new customer expectations with original products, designed and manufactured in an optimized way, sold at the right price and delivered as quickly as possible. Lectra demonstrated how manufacturers of customized fabric furniture can make these possibilities a reality with the exclusive preview of the complete Furniture on Demand by Lectra offer.
Furniture on Demand by Lectra, Lectra’s furniture-specific Industry 4.0 range, is composed of two packages: Made to Order and Made to Customize. Furniture on Demand is the industry’s first end-to-end solution, from order processing to cutting. Using artificial intelligence, data, the Industrial Internet of Things and cloud technology, it enables furniture manufacturers to manage and optimize small series and customized order production.
Arriving one year after the launch of Made to Order, the newly revealed Made to Customize package reinforces the strength of Furniture on Demand by Lectra with even greater automation and intelligence. With Made to Customize, companies wishing to expand their customization offer beyond just fabric choice can automatically combine the chosen product model, fabrics and components directly from an end-consumer’s order. It is then automatically transformed into a cutting order and transferred to the cutting room. This ‘click and cut’ process ensures faster time to market with a minimal risk of error.
For furniture companies producing leather-upholstered furniture, the release of Versalis 2019, the latest generation of Lectra’s digital leather cutting solution, delivers evolutions that significantly improve productivity, nesting efficiency, and operator ergonomics for increased throughput of the entire production cycle. New application programming interfaces (APIs) tighten integration between Versalis and a company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to enable direct transfer of work orders for cutting. Companies also have greater access to production data for enhanced production supervision through valuable key performance indicators (KPIs). The use of augmented reality technology used at the hide digitization and offloading stages improves operator comfort and performance, minimizes hide waste and avoids sorting mistakes.
Versalis 2019 and the Made to Order package are currently available. The Made to Customize package will be launched starting in September 2019. Empowering customers through industrial intelligence. “The furniture industry is at the dawn of an era rich in opportunity. Industry 4.0 opens up a range of possibilities for value creation and transformation. When change is so profound, having the right partnerships is key. Lectra’s newest solutions affirm our deep commitment to supporting our customers on their Industry 4.0 journey,” says Céline Choussy, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Lectra.
