Cut More from Every Bar: Steel Cutting Optimisation Linked to Epicor Kinetic

By Rick Loh, CEO, Amet (M) Sdn Bhd

Walk through almost any fabrication yard in Malaysia and you will find a rack of offcuts. Some will be used again. Many will end up sold as scrap, at a fraction of what the steel cost. Each piece is the result of a cutting decision made earlier, often by one experienced planner working from a spreadsheet or a printed order list.

For fabricators of structures, towers, machinery frames and similar products, raw material is one of the largest costs on every job, and steel prices move. How well you cut is one of the few levers fully under your control. This article looks at where cutting waste comes from, how cutting optimisation works, and why linking it to Epicor Kinetic matters as much as the optimisation itself.

Where cutting waste comes from

Cutting waste rarely comes from carelessness. It usually comes from the way the work is planned:

Orders are cut one at a time. Each job is planned on its own, so the leftover from one order is never matched with a short piece needed on another.

Plans live in someone's head. When cutting plans depend on one or two experienced people, the result varies with who is on shift and how busy they are.

Stock lengths do not match demand. Buying standard lengths without looking at the cut lengths you actually need leaves predictable offcuts.

Usable remnants go missing. A remnant that is not recorded in the system cannot be planned against, so new bars are cut while good material sits on the rack.

Costs are averaged. If actual material usage is not recorded against the job, the job cost reflects what you planned, not what you cut.

How cutting optimisation works

The idea is simple, even if the maths is not. You have a list of pieces to cut, each with a length and a quantity, and a set of stock lengths available. The optimiser works out how to group those pieces onto bars so that the total offcut is as small as practical.

A good planner can do this well for a short list. With dozens of cut lengths across several orders and more than one stock length, the number of possible combinations grows far beyond what anyone can check by hand. Software can test those combinations in seconds and produce a plan the floor can follow, with each bar showing which pieces to cut and in what order.

Why the link to Kinetic matters

A standalone optimiser solves half the problem. Someone still has to type the cut list in, and someone has to update stock and job records afterwards. Every retyping step is a chance for error and delay.

That is why we built M-Cut, AMET's cutting optimiser, to work with Epicor Kinetic. It is being put to work at a tower fabricator, where cutting plans are generated from Kinetic data. The flow is straightforward:

Pull requirements. Cut lengths and quantities come from orders and jobs already in Kinetic, so nothing is retyped.

Optimise. M-Cut groups the cuts across available stock lengths to reduce offcuts.

Execute and record. Cutting plans go to the floor as clear instructions, and the results link back to Kinetic.

Because the results return to Kinetic, the ERP that plans and costs the job also knows what was cut. Kinetic's job management is designed to compare costs and link orders to jobs, so accurate material data feeds straight into job cost and margin reporting.

Fitting into Kinetic for metal fabrication

Kinetic already includes a lot for fabricators, and M-Cut is designed to fill a specific gap alongside it. Epicor lists capabilities for fabricated metals manufacturers that include cost-based estimating, MRP with inventory control, and Advanced Unit of Measure for managing dimensional inventory. Epicor also offers NESTLink, which connects Kinetic to nesting software for sheet material, synchronising work orders, sheet stock, material usage and scrap.

Nesting deals with parts cut from flat sheet. Many fabricators also cut linear stock: angle, bar, pipe and sections. That is where a cutting optimiser earns its place, using the same principle of planning from ERP data and recording results back, applied to lengths rather than sheets.

Getting started

If you want to reduce cutting waste, the first steps do not require any software:

Collect a month of cutting lists. Note the stock lengths used and roughly how much went to scrap.

Check your remnant rules. Decide the minimum length worth keeping and make sure those pieces are recorded as stock, not left loose on a rack.

Look at how jobs are batched. Cutting several orders together usually gives the optimiser more room to work.

Confirm what Kinetic knows. Check that cut lengths and quantities are held on jobs in Kinetic in a consistent format, ready for an optimiser to read.

These steps are useful on their own, and they make the move to an optimiser much smoother.

Who this suits

M-Cut is aimed at Kinetic users who cut bar or length-based stock: structural and tower fabricators, machinery builders, and other discrete manufacturers whose jobs start with a saw. If your planners spend hours on cutting lists, or your scrap bin fills faster than you expect, it is worth a closer look.

Send us a cutting list

The easiest way to see what optimisation could do for you is to try it on your own data. Share a recent cutting list and your stock lengths, and we will walk you through how M-Cut would plan it. Contact AMET at inquiry@my-amet.com or +603 7713 5388.