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India, a new partner and new clientsIn the spring of 2008, Alma entered a distribution partnership with JSM Technologies , an Indian company from Pune (Maharashtra), specialised in solutions and services integration for shipyards. Founded in 2001, JSM Technologies is a fast growing structure which can boast having performed 200 000 hours of conception for the Indian naval industry. Strong with both technical expertise and extensive knowledge of shipyards issues regarding conception and manufacturing, JSM Technologies sells act/cut (Alma’s nesting and cutting machine programing software) to the Indian shipyards, among which the company has a strongly established presence. The first benefit of this partnership came in at Bharati Shipyard , a leading Indian private sector shipyard engaged in design and construction of Sea-going, Coastal, Harbour, Inland crafts and vessels. Two act/cut licences have been installed on the Ratnagiri site, south of Mumbai, interfacing with Catia V5. Furthermore, the 2.2 billion euros contract entered in 2006 by the French shipbuilders DCN and the Indian Navy concerning six Scorpene submarines, the highly advanced French submarine, led to a technology transfer to Mazagon Dock , the Indian shipyard tasked with building the submarines. act/cut, which had been in use for a long time already on DCN various sites in France, entered production at Mazagon Dock in June 2008. The design and parts files are provided by DCN , the nesting and the programmation of the Farley machine are performed within the Indian shipyard.
www.wedetailships.com Alma gets a foothold in the Chinese marketAlma China, Alma’s Shanghai-based subsidiary, endeavoured to promote act/cut to the ship construction industry from its creation in 2007. The shipbuilding market is a fast growing market in China at the expense of Korea among others. China worldwide market share grew from 18% to 23% between 2006 and 2007, according to the Clarkson Research Institute. Even though the industry remains dominated by two huge state-sponsored groups (China State Shipbuilding Corporation and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation), a myriad of shipyards, subsidized by local governments, private capital or set as joint ventures, also developed in the last years numbering from about 350 to nearly 3 000 in ten years (source: aujourdhuilachine.com) That is the context in which act/cut entered production in the beginning of 2008 in several Chinese shipyards. Among these, Guangzhou Wenchong Shipyard Co., Ltd. , specializing in the construction of freighters, tugs, dredger, oil tankers and other carriers, doubled its ready-to-cut NC files output thanks to act/cut. The inbred link to conception, the heavy automation and efficiency of the automatic nesting feature enabled it to streamline production and support its powerful growth. The Yantai Raffles Offshore shipyard also selected Alma to streamline material stock use and reduce its machines programming time. Systematically taking into account the existing remnants and improving the use of new sheets, act/cut enables substantial savings for the offshore platform builder. Alma China took part in the China Shipbuilding 2008 event in Shanghai where it established several contacts on a promising market. The low level of equipment in advanced programming software and the huge productivity boost enabled by act/cut herald the rapid growth of Alma’s sales in China.
www.wenchongshipyard.com More integration for act/cut at Wismar and Rostock-Warnemünde yardsFollowing the pooling of their capabilities and know-how within the frame of Akers ship building activities reorganization since 2002, the Wismar and Rostock-Warnemünde German yards became two of the most up-to-date shipyards worldwide. These yards can build standard ships as well as custom ones up to 300 000 and 200 000 dwt respectively. Since September 2008, the two shipyards have been controlled by Wadan Yards, a new group which also owns an Ukrainian shipyards and whose shareholders are FLC West, a Russian private group. Alma software is in production in both Wismar and Rostock-Warnemünde yards since 1995 and its use perimeter was recently extended along two axes. On one hand, the original manufacturing orders management application, which generated the launching orders, has been replaced by Alma’s act/ manager module. On the other hand, a direct interface with Tribon software replaced the old “Tribon/INI” interface. The .gen files exported by Tribon are now processed directly by act/cut, resulting in a surer and simpler procedure. These developments illustrate quite well Alma’s software customization and automation capabilities so important in ship building applications: consideration of specific grouping criteria at act/manager level, single program to manage and automatically coordinate the import of management data and parts geometries files for both sites… New developments added to Alma installations at Aker Yards FranceAker Yards France (ex- Chantiers de l’Atlantique), in Saint-Nazaire, Alma’s historical client of Alma in the ship building industry, is nowadays integrated in the Cruise & Ferries business area of the group. A full rewriting of the interface between act/cut programming processes and the ERP has been performed. Until then, act/cut interfaced with an ERP devised specifically for the Chantiers de l’Atlantique and managed separately three plane sheet cutting workshops: nappes (for the floors), PRS, and metallic shells. The integration of a Finish ERP replacing the old in-house system required the complete rewriting of the interface with act/cut (data import and information feedback following the closing of the launching orders). This allowed switching to a “multi-sessions”, “multi-technologies” programming method greatly increasing organizational flexibility. Previously, each act/cut user was dedicated to one of the workshops (and therefore to one technology) and worked panel by panel (a panel being a part of a ship); the user therefore only imported the manufacturing orders directly concerning him from the ERP. Now, act/cut processes import files from the ERP that group various technologies and any act/cut user can generate programs for all the workshops. Moreover, it is possible to import several panels of a same ship to work in a “multi-sessions” process. Another important new feature of the installed system is that all nestings are generated automatically, in a black box. “ With the setting up of our new ERP, we intend to streamline our nesting processes and harmonize our CAM tool range. Using act/cut as our single CAM tool enables us to do so. This solution has several benefits: simplification of the communication between the ERP and act/cut, operators versatility, possibility to switch manufacturing orders from a workshop to another, easier maintenance and support. ” emphasizes Yann Crépeau, manager of the “SI Fabrication” functional area at Aker Yards France . The flexibility and automation provided by act/cut and its interface with the ERP in this new organization should increase even more: it is planned to be able to combine manufacturing orders containing parts for various ships and to perform the complete cutting machine programming cycle in a black box (tool path computation and post-processing included). All this does not even cover the whole use of act/cut at Aker Yards France . Indeed, Alma’s software has been chosen to handle the bars cutting, also split in three workshops (short bars, bars for nappes and special sections). Regarding the nesting in bars, Alma’s one dimension nesting algorithms have been added to act/cut to create a fully automated application that goes all the way to the generation of the cutting instructions files, used to generate the ISO code destined to the various machines. The route is set towards new projects with the Dassault Systèmes partnershipsParticipating in the CAA V5 program, as software partner to Dassault Systèmes , act/cut is associated to the “CATIA Structure / DELMIA DPM for Structure” solution. Shipyards equipped with the CATIA V5 software which manage marking and sheet cutting processes can therefore benefit from the act/cut solution and from Alma’s expertise in sheet metal CAM applied to ship building. Through this dynamic partnership, Alma has contacts with various yards worldwide, from Turkey to Spain and Korea or even Thailand. Alma’s international positioning and technical expertise enable Alma to play a leading role on this fastly growing market. |
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