Success story: pohltec fassaden GmbH

About pohltec fassaden

As a part of the globally operating POHL Facade Division, pohltec fassaden GmbH combines innovative design with craftsmanship and state-of-the-art technology to create sustainable building envelopes. At the Günzburg site, more than 50 employees manufacture high-quality facade systems, substructures and metal fabrications for a wide variety of customers. In the daily business, sheet metal products according to the drawings of regional metalworkers and locksmiths are just as carefully fabricated as complex facade parts for international major customers. The reference list contains top architecture such as the recently opened Edge observation deck (New York City, USA), the Amazon corporate headquarters Doppler (Seattle, USA), the German Stock Exchange (Frankfurt am Main) or the BMW World (Munich) – to name just a few. 

The challenge

The diverse portfolio of the POHL Facade Division places high demands on production-oriented CAD preparation and subsequent machine programming. Managing Director of pohltec fassaden GmbH in Günzburg, Josef Deil, started looking for a long-term partner for work preparation that could meet these demands in the beginning of 2020. The desire to break new ground in this process step was stronger than the initial skepticism. In order to relieve the employees during peak periods and even more to involve them in design activities and customer projects POHL Facade Division was looking for a new partner that takes over parts of the daily work in work preparation and at the same time provides new impetus for machine programming with its own know how. The first contact was made when ScaleNC was still being developed as an innovation project at TRUMPF – and the starting signal for the official collaboration was given shortly after ScaleNC GmbH was founded in August 2020.

Why ScaleNC?

As a technology start-up, ScaleNC combines experience & expertise in the field of CAD/CAM for sheet metal production with the requirement to support both operationally in the preparation of drawings and NC programming in the daily production process as well as to conceptually rethink existing processes and optimize them through the targeted use of software automation. Delivering results for the customer is always the top priority – the technology remains discreetly in the background. This enables ScaleNC to quickly take on even demanding activities such as programming new types of façade parts without having to wait for long development cycles. Customer requirements can thus be taken into account immediately.

The solution

At the beginning of the collaboration, pohltec fassaden employees provided the ScaleNC team with various drawings and CAD data of typical facade components. On this basis, ScaleNC was able to create initial unfoldings and NC programs for the target machines. In the Günzburg production facility, the target machines are proven high-productivity machines by TRUMPF, including a TruPunch 5000 punching machine and a TruLaser 5060 2D laser-cutting machine.

The learning curve for ScaleNC was preciptious: First it was necessary to understand the special features of facade production in detail. For example, stamped parts with part sizes of up to 4 meters are produced on oversize panels at pohltec fassaden, which require repositioning during machining and accordingly programming. Many forming operations, common punching strokes (TwinLine) and the optimized nesting required for this, as well as the large number of visible edges on the components, make punching programming a real challenge. The same applies to waste-optimized laser programming for parts up to 6 meters long, many of which are marked and manufactured with sharp-edged inner contours. This usually involves cutting off residual sheets - the often exclusive customer-specific raw material would be much too good for disposal!

Both partners did not let themselves be thrown off track by initial stumbling blocks – after a few attempts, the results were matching the requirements and the confidence in each other's abilities had grown noticeably.

The intensive phase at the beginning of the collaboration paid off. For several months now, ScaleNC has been supporting its customer in work preparation: in the digitization of technical drawings, some of which are only available in PDF format, in the generation of precisely fitting unfoldings (cutting geometries) and in the creation of NC programs for punching and 2D laser cutting machines. ScaleNC has already been able to accelerate recurring manual tasks side with first software-based automation approaches, for example in the programming of variant components, which has a positive effect for pohltec fassaden in terms of both response time and price. The two teams are in regular personal contact via the ScaleNC cloud platform and other digital channels. The fact that there is now a high level of trust in the work of ScaleNC is also reflected in the fact that production orders with a raw material value in the five to six figures are now transmitted for preparation and machine programming.

Result

Pohltec fassaden has found a partner in ScaleNC that supports in daily operations in CAD and CAM tasks for sheet metal processing and that has helped to create the desired flexibility and capacity relief. Programming jobs can be easily and flexibly handed over to ScaleNC's CAD/CAM experts via the ScaleNC platform and are processed within a few days according to the customer's specifications. The employees in the work preparation department control the allocation independently and decide, depending on their own workload, which orders should be taken over by ScaleNC.

Moreover, the ScaleNC team was not only able to optimize its own processes at record speed thanks to the intensive exchange and open feedback from the pohltec employees, but subsequently also to give back new impulses for the machine programming. In particular, pohltec fassaden benefits directly from further developments of ScaleNC's CAD/CAM technology stack. Furthermore, it is evident that the mutual exchange now not only refers to the actual machine programming, but also increasingly focuses on the functionality of the ScaleNC platform. At the suggestion of pohltec fassaden, the ScaleNC software team was able to implement improvements and new features such as optimized job selection on the platform in a short time, thus further simplifying operation for all users – a successful example of agile development.

Both partners benefit from the cooperation at the same level and have planned the further expansion of the cooperation for 2021.

Contact

POHL Facade Division
pohltec fassaden GmbH
Leitenweg 7
89312 Günzburg
Germany
https://www.pohl-facades.com/
Photo credits: Conné van d´Grachten (i Live Tower, Aalen), POHL Facade Division (other photos)