We cut CNC cell changeovers from 42 to 18 minutes with pre-staged kits and standardized clamp sets, but the bottleneck shifted to tool preset and sequence planning. Anyone have proven guides, templates, or software recs for sustaining SMED and constraint-based scheduling in high-mix/low-volume, ideally something lightweight we can pilot within a week?
Spin up a one‑week pilot by making a “family tool map” (common cutters/offsets) in a shared sheet and piping routings + constraints into OptaPlanner’s job‑shop quickstart (https://github.com/kiegroup/optaplanner-examples) to get finite‑capacity sequences aligned to your presetter batches. Small caveat: start with 2–3 part families and park the rest as ‘fixed slots’ so you don’t boil the ocean — want a sample sheet I use?
Have you tried a lightweight tool like Kanban for sequencing? It might help with that planning bottleneck you mentioned. How’s your team currently managing the tool presets?