If you cut up two million feet of cable worth $10 per foot and are left with 5% waste, then the cost of the waste is $1,000,000. At that price, you cannot afford to make poor cutting decisions. No one knows this better than Anixter Inc., the world's largest distributor of wire and cable. Anixter called on LINDO Systems to help explore ways to minimize waste.

Dow Chemical selected Anixter to cut and lay two million feet of power cable at their new chemical manufacturing facility. The project required over 3,500 separate lengths of cable ranging from 200 to 2,000 feet at a cost of $4 to $40 per foot. The lengths were to be cut from an inventory of over one hundred different master reels.

Cutting stock applications such as this determine how to cut smaller pieces out of bulk stock to meet demand with a minimum amount of waste. Ideally Anixter would be able to select several master reels and cut the lengths so as to leave no unused cable remaining. To compound Anixter's problem, Dow's project deadlines allowed very little time to make the cutting decisions.

LINDO Systems worked with Anixter to customize a general cutting stock front-end to LINDO to solve their problem. Anixter supplied a list of available master reel lengths and a list of the lengths to be cut. The LINDO application then selected the master reels to be cut and assigned the cut lengths to the reels to minimize waste.

"Normally, on a project with over 3,000 cuts to be made on several million feet of cable, you can expect about 7% to 8% waste," stated Brian Kerwood, Anixter's Cut Administrator on the Dow project. "With the help of the LINDO application, we cut waste to only 3%. That's a significant difference!" In addition to substantially cutting waste, the LINDO application provided answers fast -- saving Anixter critical man hours on the project.

LINDO Systems cutting stock technology has been successfully applied to cutting cable, bar stock, rolled paper and plastic, and many other items.

For more information on LINDO, see our products pages. You can also download a trial version from the download page or order a version directly from our order page.