Shop type 01
The laser is rarely the problem. The brake and the kit are.
In sheet metal work, parts from unrelated jobs are cut on the same sheet, then split into separate downstream queues. A schedule that treats a job as one continuous block of time will be wrong from the first operation.
Governing constraint
Cutting is shared across jobs; bending, welding and finishing are not, and nothing ships until the whole kit is done.
Diagram: one nest, three jobs
Cut once. Three jobs advance. Three brake queues to satisfy.
Illustrative nest layout drawn for this page. Job numbers are examples, not customer data.
01What changes here
What this work does to a schedule.
Nesting merges jobs, then unmerges them
One cut operation can advance three jobs at once. After the laser, each job is back on its own routing with its own remaining hours, so a single 'cut complete' event fans out into several independent queues.
Bend time is setup-heavy on small quantities
Ten brackets with six hits each is mostly tool changes. Scheduling by piece count over-promises; scheduling with a real setup number per bend program does not.
A kit is only as early as its slowest part
If nineteen parts are finished and the twentieth is waiting on a formed panel, the assembly cannot start. The date has to be driven by the last part, not the average.
Material grade and thickness fragment the queue
A job waiting on 5 mm plate is not helped by a full rack of 3 mm. Availability has to be tracked at the grade-and-thickness level to gate an operation honestly.
02What Takta models
Handled for sheet metal work.
In development
Per-operation setup and run rates
Separate setup time and per-part run time on each work center, so short runs are costed in time the way they actually behave.
In development
Job routings across cut, form, weld, finish
An ordered operation list per job with the work center each operation consumes.
Specified, not built
Kit completion dates
A ship date derived from the latest-finishing part in the kit rather than the first.
Specified, not built
Material gating by grade and thickness
An operation held until the specific material it needs is recorded as on site.
Not planned for the first release
Nest optimisation
Takta does not decide how to nest parts on a sheet. That stays in your CAM software; Takta schedules the cut operation it produces.
Not planned for the first release
Machine-side program transfer
No program upload, DNC or machine control is part of this product.
Not covered
- No CAM, nesting or geometry processing.
- No quoting or price calculation.
- No inventory purchasing, receiving or stock counts, only the arrival date you record.
03Next
If this is your shop, we want your routings in front of us.
Early access is a conversation about how you schedule today, followed by an invitation to try the first release when it can genuinely help.