Lectra FAQ

FAQ

Get answers to all your pressing product and industry-specific questions.

Automotive Leather

How can I benefit from greater flexibility in leather cutting?

Through digitalization, patterns can be created directly from 3D seat trim outline (STO) models, fine-tuned for production, visually simulated for aesthetics, and cut within a few hours to find the best model. Without the limitations of die cavities and roller presses – not to mention related production costs –designers and engineers can let their imagination soar to new heights.

How can I expedite program start-ups for my leather cutting?

Developing production patterns directly from 3D STO models makes foam-model development a thing of the past. As dies take 6 to 12 weeks to produce, every design change results in additional alterations to cavities that postpone production further. In Lectra’s Digital Value Chain, program start-ups can take just a few days. All you need is an approved CAD file to perform digital cutting.

How can I achieve greater consistency of cut leather parts?

When your cutting room is staffed by hundreds of people, there’s typically a wide range of skill levels – and the leather varies in quality by hide, by lot or by season. It takes years to train the best nesting operators in a roller die-press environment. In Lectra’s Digital Value Chain, automated nesting means you can guarantee a high degree of consistency despite these variables.

How can I improve health and safety for cutting operators?

Each operator working on a manual press cutting table lifts an average of 1.5 to 2 tons of steel a day, often while leaning over plastic die boards over three meters wide. Reaching the center of a hide with a heavy cavity in hand is no easy feat. With an automated leather cutter like Lectra's VersalisAuto, lifting dies is no longer necessary – and its integrated conveyor system simplifies hide loading and offloading.

How can I improve the efficiency of leather parts production?

With Lectra's end-to-end leather cutting solutions, development time takes mere weeks, thanks to the simultaneous creation of patterns, 3D prototypes and foam molds. Die cavities and roller presses are eliminated, saving time. You’ll improve order processing and yield, with superior cutting capabilities that increase hide efficiency. Plus, our professional services team will help you get the best performance from your Lectra solution.

Automotive Fabric

How can I streamline and optimize my automotive cutting room?

Lectra is the only company to combine leading-edge technology, cutting room expertise and global support services in a single offering to transform even large-scale, multi-site fabric cutting operations. Our integrated offer and global capabilities enable you to achieve operational excellence in quality, cost and delivery times.

How can I better manage manufacturing complexity?

The flexibility of digital cutting enables faster changeovers and simplified management of the increasingly complex range of interior options offered to consumers – different fabrics, styles, and features. Lectra’s VectorAuto solution, the market’s best-selling digital fabric cutter, enables you to deliver a wider variety of options, meet tight production schedules and reduce fabric costs.

How can I supply the smaller parts needed to produce increasingly complex designs without impacting productivity?

Lectra’s VectorAuto iX6 features an ultra-precision cutting head to produce perfectly cut parts for interior and seat components, optimizing the cost per cut part, no matter how small or intricate the design. Offering the same high performance as Lectra's best-in-class VectorAuto iX9, the even more versatile VectorAuto iX6 increases cutting capacity by 20% compared to models currently available on the market.

How can I lower cost per seat set?

We’ll help you quickly identify pathways to improvement and implement operational solutions to business challenges by optimizing the advanced parameters of your equipment to maximize performance. This means you can improve cutting speed and the total number of plies cut without lowering production quality – increasing capacity and reducing cost per seat set.

How can I lower cost per cut part?

To provide the lowest cost per cut part on the market today, Lectra’s Vector digital cutting solution delivers a unique combination of five customer benefits: - Cutting capacity of up to 9cm of fabric plies - The highest possible cutting speed - Highest cutting quality - Minimal buffer between cut parts - Unmatched levels of equipment availability

What kind of machine availability can I expect from VectorAuto?

VectorAuto customers benefit from up to 98% machine availability, thanks to sophisticated predictive maintenance enabled by more than 120 built-in sensors, backed by the support of an international network of 150 solution experts. With Lectra Service Contract coverage, we can resolve 80% of calls without on-premises intervention.

Airbags

How can I meet fluctuating production needs when cutting flat airbag fabric?

Lectra's FocusQuantum FT range offers two state-of-the-art, flat cutting solutions, designed to meet two different levels of airbag production, so you can meet fluctuating production needs.

How can I increase productivity when cutting OPW airbag fabric?

Major hardware and software improvements built into Lectra’s FocusQuantum OPW 3K allow airbag cushion suppliers to produce significantly higher output with zero compromise on the exacting safety requirements imposed on these life-saving devices.

How can I optimize the availability of my airbag solution?

Lectra's FocusQuantum solutions offer best-in-class uptime with up to 98% machine availability, thanks to preventative maintenance, expert support services and best-in-class technology. Our experts can help you audit your production process to optimize efficiency.

How can I optimize my material utilization?

FocusQuantum Suite offers improved nesting, enabling up to 2.2% fabric savings for flat fabric, while FocusQuantum SmartCutting for one-piece-woven optimizes future loom layout, enabling up to 2% savings for OPW fabric. With Focus Quantum pilot, you can use common lines management to create zero buffer between pieces, resulting in material savings. Our solution experts are also on hand to help you assess and optimize your cutting parameters.

How can I manage multiple formats used by the different industrial design departments that design OPW airbags?

Lectra's FocusQuantum Suite offers a new way to design OPW airbags in half the time by unifying multidatum, scaled, mainframe and hybrid methods with SmartCutting technology.

How does Lectra manage maintenance and repair issues on a FocusQuantum?

FocusQuantum Support Contracts are at the heart of Lectra’s airbag cutting room solutions. Our solutions are continuouslly connected to our call centers via hundreds of sensors embedded in the equipment and its accessories, including the laser source, chiller and spreader, so we can take pre-emptive action before any failure occurs.

How can I overcome distortion when cutting cheaper nylon and polyester OPW airbag fabrics?

OPW FocusQuantum Suite Smart Cutting technology, regardless of the fabric skew & bow distortion, adapts cutting paths in real-time to ensure perfect cutting quality.

Other Industries

How can I use material more efficiently?

With Diamino, you can use costly and complex material much more efficiently: - Automatic marker-making guarantees both consistent marker quality and 2% to 5% material savings - Automate tedious, repetitive tasks, freeing skilled personnel to concentrate on high-value areas - Automatic nesting saves time in data preparation and significantly reduces the risk of human error

How can I achieve higher productivity while maintaining high quality?

Combining intelligent nesting with high-speed, high-quality cutting, Vector delivers the optimum balance between material savings, quality and productivity. With automatic labeling and inkjet printing on cut parts, Vector enables you to guarantee part traceability for composite materials. After cutting, parts to be offloaded are grouped by color on screen, simplifying the process and reducing the risk of error.

How can I optimize the use of expensive full-grain and aniline leathers?

Lectra’s integrated leather-cutting solution, Versalis, optimizes the end-to-end leather cutting process. Automated cutting offers multiple advantages compared to dies: - Significant material savings with intelligent nesting - Consistently high quality with precision cutting - Efficient use of human resources

Does Lectra cutting equipment meet workplace health and safety requirements?

Operator safety and comfort are vital. From Diamino to Vector, we’ve ergonomically designed our solutions to be safe, user-friendly and intuitive. A built-in vacuum system during cutting prevents operators from inhaling small fabric or leather particles that could damage their health, while barriers ensure operator safety around the cutting area.

How can I digitalize my existing design and development and cutting room operations?

From implementation to sustainability and continuous improvement, Lectra provides ongoing support to its customers in digitalizing end-to-end processes. Through our project and change management approach, our business consultants and solution specialists work closely with customers to develop a tailored evolution plan. This, combined with hands-on training, allows your users to be operational and efficient as soon as possible.

Fashion

Does Lectra offer a made-to-measure solution?

Lectra’s team of skilled experts has combined its knowledge of pattern construction and alterations to create a dedicated made-to-measure solution for the fashion industry. With a fully automated end-to-end process, taking into account fabric and pattern matching, Lectra covers every stage of made-to-measure production, from order to cut.

Can Lectra help me move to a mass customization model?

Lectra’s solutions for the fashion industry enable manufacturers to offer mass customization using a cost-effective, automated process. Custom orders can be communicated from the order management system direct to Lectra pattern processing software and cutting room equipment, creating a fast, seamless process to produce and deliver custom orders quickly and profitably.

Does Lectra offer a solution for industrialization?

Lectra’s Diamino and Optiplan solutions cover every aspect of fashion industrialization and pre-production, from pre-costing, forecast and pre-booking material and trims, to costing, quotes, and marker-making.

Furniture and Consumables

How can Lectra help me meet rising demand for customized and small series furniture?

Lectra’s Cutting Room 4.0 for Made to Order range is the first Industry 4.0 solution for upholstered furniture, designed to create an agile, productive, cost-efficient made-to-order process. It combines a digital cutting platform with a single-ply cutting solution for plain and patterned fabric to accelerate and streamline made-to-order furniture manufacturing.

How will a Lectra cutting room help me respond to shorter lead times?

Whether you’re working with leather or fabric, each element of our cutting room solutions is designed to flow seamlessly into the next – giving you the ultimate in process efficiency and productivity and enabling you to work much faster. As well as our advanced technology, you’ll benefit from our global support services and remote assistance to ensure maximum uptime.

How will virtual prototyping improve the design and development process?

Our DesignConcept solution helps you move on from traditional processes, replacing physical prototypes with 3D virtual prototypes. By using virtual prototyping to modify designs, validate style variants and dimensions and decide on the style and size, you can halve the number of physical prototypes necessary – significantly accelerating your development process.

How can I optimize my mass-production process?

Our comprehensive range of integrated cutting solutions, Vector, optimizes mass production cycles from marker-making to cutting. With efficient, high-quality cutting and high uptimes, our Vector solutions gives you the versatility to manage mass production runs – and even unplanned orders – with ease.

I use a manual leather cutting process. Why should I switch to automated leather cutting?

When you’re using manual processes, it’s difficult to satisfy customer demand for customization, modularity and fast delivery. With a Versalis cutting room, you can cut a mix of models on the same hide and easily make last-minute changes to orders – or even specific models. And as labor costs rise and it becomes more difficult to find experienced operators, Versalis lets you match the productivity of 10 manual cutters with just two operators.

Why is it important to change the whole conveyor bristle block at once?

If you’re working in one shift, we recommend you replace the entire bristle block on your conveyor every three years. If too many bristles get blocked with waste, the quality of your cut will suffer and you won’t get optimum performance from your Lectra cutting solution.

Can I buy Lectra consumables through wholesalers or other manufacturers?

Lectra is the only manufacturer and supplier of compatible consumables for Lectra equipment. Every component is designed and produced in line with strict specifications outlined by our technical experts.

Can Lectra help me select the right consumables?

Our solution and industry experts are on hand to help you choose the best consumables based on your business needs and applications. Don’t hesitate to contact us – our call center agents will put you in touch with the right expert to help you find the right components.