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Prior manufacturing work
Furniture manufacturing · Canada & Mexico
Foam production, nesting, and shop-floor management.
A connected operational solution for managing foam inventory, coordinating 2D and 3D nesting inputs and outputs, preparing physical material, and tracking work through production.
Operational problem
Foam cutting depended on accurate knowledge of full foam buns, reusable remnants, piece requirements, nesting recommendations, CNC cutting work, and material movement across the shop floor.
Without a connected operational layer, teams faced manual coordination, limited visibility into reusable material, and the risk that cutting jobs and bill-of-material requirements would not align.
Solution
Foam Shop App maintained current inventory for complete buns and physically identified, reusable remnants. It read cutting requirements, matched suitable remnants to material requests, and connected the inventory and production workflow around the nesting systems.
Act/Cut performed 2D nesting. Foam Shop processed its outputs and CNC job information, then provided ActCube with block requirements plus available remnants and full buns. ActCube performed 3D nesting, prioritizing remnants before full buns. Foam Shop then read ActCube's recommended-material CSV, reserved inventory, and generated warehouse preparation reports.
Cut requirements & Act/Cut
Piece demand and 2D nesting outputs
Foam Shop inventory
Reusable remnants and full buns by grade, size, and location
ActCube
3D nesting prioritizes remnants, then full buns
Reservation & picking
Recommended materials are reserved and prepared
Cutting & shop-floor tracking
CNC work, QR status, WIP, labels, reporting, and gluing coordination
Cut requirements and Act/Cut 2D nesting outputs feed the Foam Shop App inventory. Foam Shop provides available remnants and full buns to ActCube, which performs 3D nesting. Foam Shop then processes ActCube recommendations, reserves material, supports picking, and coordinates cutting and shop-floor tracking. Reusable remnants return to inventory.
Production coverage
- Compared required pieces and BOM demand with cutting jobs to identify missing or additional pieces.
- Supported QR scanning, production states, physical location, WIP tracking, labels, and operational reporting.
- Coordinated downstream work, including material preparation and gluing activities.
- Integrated with Act/Cut, ActCube, SQL data, and CNC job files, including Fecken Kirfel .job files where relevant.
Estimated operational impact
Approximately CAD 300,000 annually in Winnipeg
An operational estimate based on process-efficiency improvements and reduced manual-work requirements. It was not an audited saving, was not formally certified by the employer, and should not be attributed exclusively to nesting.
Personal responsibility
Designed around the real material and production flow.
Scope of contribution
- Designed and delivered the Foam Shop App and its SQL-backed operational model.
- Integrated inventory, cutting requirements, Act/Cut outputs, ActCube recommendations, and CNC job information.
- Built production controls for material reservation, picking, QR scanning, WIP status, labels, reporting, and downstream coordination.
- Supported implementation across manufacturing plants in Canada and Mexico.
Technology: .NET / Windows Forms and SQL Server, integrated with Almacam/Alma Act/Cut and ActCube and CNC cutting workflows.