Digital Cutting Table Investment for Macfarlane Packaging
Macfarlane Packaging is the UK’s leading distributor of protective packaging and when the company invested £300,000 in a brand-new, state-of-the-art Innovation Laboratory at its Milton Keynes site, it was an exciting and interesting move.
The 'Innovation Lab' was set up to meet the most demanding of packaging challenges. Working with the UK's leading retailers and third party logistics businesses to develop innovative, aesthetically attractive and cost effective packaging solutions, the Innovation Lab is already reaping rewards. Since it opened in April, the centre for excellence has already won new business in excess of £1m for Macfarlane Packaging. This new business alone has already justified the opening of such a revolutionary facility.
Technical Design Manager at the Innovation Lab, Richard Garratt, comments: "Macfarlane opened this facility to give the industry a reference point for innovation. We invite customers to the Innovation Lab where we can develop a tailor-made solution that examines the complete supply chain for the customer. To do this, we have employed the most innovative hardware and software and this includes an AG/CAD KM627 sample cutting table together with three licences of KASEMAKE structural design software."
Why Opt For KASEMAKE?
With over 20 years’ experience in the packaging and print world, Richard was instrumental in helping to deliver this high-tech centre. Recalling why Macfarlane opted for the KASEMAKE and KM627 combination, Mr Garratt says: "Whilst there are other packages on the market, KASEMAKE is a proven standard for the packaging industry. I’ve had many years experience using all the main systems, but KASEMAKE is the most productive and user friendly package available.”
Richard continues: "KASEMAKE is a fully inclusive system that includes 2D design, 3D rendering and animation, parametric style libraries and creation, layout and nesting features, and a very comprehensive and easy-to-use database interface. KASEMAKE incorporates a complete tool set that offers boundless opportunities - in fact we even drew the floor plans for our new Innovation Lab in full scale using KASEMAKE."
The Innovation Lab has three licences of KASEMAKE software that are used by Richard and his design team to create clever packaging solutions for clients on a daily basis. "We have 24 facilities around the UK with manufacturing sites at Grantham and Westbury. Both of the manufacturing sites also have KASEMAKE CAD systems. This enables us to share files between the Innovation Lab and our production facilities instantly and with no loss of data."
KASEMAKE Delivers the Need-For-Speed
The Innovation Lab is designed to solve customer challenges who will often arrive with little more than their product and an outline concept. From this, the Innovation Lab can design, develop and manufacture a prototype solution that is finished in the same day for the customer to take away. More impressive is that this prototype solution incorporates the packaging, its feasibility in a production environment, the assembly, the customer experience, the in-fill protection, the logistical impact and so much more. Utilising unique ‘Iceberg’ software, the lab delivers a commercial analysis of the total packaging costs throughout the customer’s supply chain. To conduct all this in just one day highlights just how slick an operation the Macfarlane Packaging Innovation Lab is.
"To get a packaging product turned around from concept to printed prototype in a day highlights the skill-set and innovation of the lab and the technology we employ. Central to this is KASEMAKE. It allows us to interrogate designs at great speed, the advanced features are all built-in and the packaging database can be easily customised. At present, we are using KASEMAKE Version 10 across all sites, but we are looking forward to upgrading to Version 11 in the near future."
Laying It On The Table...
AG/CAD also supplied a Series 7 KM627 sample cutting machine for the Innovation Lab. Commenting upon why Macfarlane opted for the KM627 table, Richard continues: "The machine has a cutting area of 1.6m by 2.5m and all our corrugated is cut from 1.7m by 2.3m stock, so the compatibility is ideal. We also need to cut foam, plastics, and solid board and the KM627 is ideal for processing these materials too. Our emphasis is on concept prototyping as opposed to high speed volume production, and the KM627 ticked all the boxes. Combining the flexibility of the cutting table with the powerful feature-sets within KASEMAKE, the solution ensures that we are well prepared for anything the industry brings through the doors of our Innovation Lab."
