“The largest investments in our company´s history“

At the same time, Lantek CEO Alberto López de Biñaspre shared details about the company’s expansion plans following the new partnership with high-tech company TRUMPF.

“We were very much looking forward to welcoming our visitors back to a trade show after such a long absence due to COVID and to present the innovations of Global Release 2021 to them in person - the response has been tremendous,” said Christoph Lenhard, Lantek’s sales manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, on the first day of the show. “It was a difficult time, but we came out of it stronger because we learned a lot. Our customers have developed new needs, such as the increased need for compatible solutions for remote and office work. This new situation reinforces our decision to develop a range of cloud products to meet these new realities.” To meet these objectives, Lantek has recruited a large number of new specialists with the necessary expertise. This is because, compared to the development of software for desktop applications, the cloud requires different programming skills and in-depth knowledge of infrastructure and services.

And this development is due to continue, as announced by Alberto López de Biñaspre, Managing Director of Lantek. “We have been experiencing double-digit organic growth for years. At the end of the third quarter of this year, sales were 30 percent higher than last year. We traditionally invest large portions of our incomes in research and development. Through our new partnership with TRUMPF, the largest industrial group in the machine tool sector, we now have the necessary resources to increasingly pursue this path. For 2022, we intend to make the largest investments in our company’s history: We want to increase our commitment to research and development by 70 percent. To do this, we plan to grow our workforce by 50 percent from the current 260 employees worldwide, with a clear commitment to R&D and our international customer support team.” Lantek is thinking long-term – with a growth plan that extends into 2025.

This year, Lantek celebrates its 35th anniversary of its foundation, the 30th of the opening of its French subsidiary and the 25th since the inauguration of its German one. López de Biñaspre emphasized the software specialist’s commitment to its strategy as a multi-vendor supplier: “The expansion plan not only strengthens our brand positioning but enhances our international footprint by bracing and expanding our current international structure“, and adds: “As family-owned companies, TRUMPF and we share values and business principles – and a common vision for the future: to turn companies in the sheet metal industry into smart factories, making them more efficient and competitive.” This is also underlined by the innovations of Global Release 2021, which Lantek presented at Blechexpo. An overview:

Lantek Expert V2021 – programming solution for 2D cutting and punching machines

Lantek Expert V2021 comes with 25 innovations that simplify and further automate the process of cutting, punching and shearing sheet metal parts for its customers:

• greater flexibility in importing parts, including drag-and-drop; duplicate part detection and management; column customization during import; and improved drawing management
• new options for more efficient destruction of remnant pieces and skeletons, as well as redistribution of parts over the entire sheet to optimize the rigidity of the skeleton
• improvement of the import of external 3D CAD designs with the A2N (Assembly To Nesting) importer, which allows automatic unfolding of most 3D formats on the market, already taking into account the tool used for bending
• the new spiral cut for hole cutting destroys the material inside the hole so that it falls into the machine bed to avoid collisions and save the manual removal of waste material; the smoother and faster cutting process avoids sharp corners and requires fewer cut start cycles
• also: better lead in/out positions, nesting by zones, new micro-joint treatments, automatic remanent dimensioning, options for skeleton destruction, customization of the import window, and improvements in cost calculation

Lantek Flex3D – for tube and profile machining

The market for tube machining is growing rapidly, as is the number of new machines, devices and technologies for cutting tubular parts. With its innovations, Lantek Flex3d V2021 reflects the new requirements of the industry:

• programming of any complex, even irregular pipe profiles
• 64-bit architecture reduces programming time by about 15 percent
• improved nesting capabilities for tube processing, additional zone nesting tools and post-processor capabilities for the most complex machine configurations - up to 5 percent material savings and 28 percent time savings
• optimization of hole cutting paths by zones and zig-zag movements reduces non-cutting movements and automatically places the entry point for each hole in the direction of machine travel; faster cutting times due to reduced acceleration and deceleration movements
• Toolpath Smart Designer for irregularly shaped pipes: more options for efficient cutting of existing profiles and ability for the programmer to create a library of new cutting paths for new pipe profiles
• switching to 64-bit: Redesigning the Steelwork module for a seamless common interface, improving the performance of many programming tasks, and increasing security and protection against malicious code.

Lantek MES und Lantek Integra

With Lantek MES and Lantek Integra, companies can manage their manufacturing, accurately track resource utilization, orders, delivery dates, quality and inventory levels, while maintaining traceability and the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, to name a few of the advances. The complex interwoven processes required to achieve this have received a great deal of attention from Lantek for the 2021 update:

• better real-time integration with machine control through Lantek WOS Opentalk - automatic reporting of the job currently being produced on the machine improves planning, workload monitoring and accurate forecasting of delivery times for customer orders and quotations
• better integration with Lantek Flex3D – more options for importing 3D CAD data (STEP, IGES, SAT) improve the quotation process
• user interface adaptation to current design standards – dark mode option increases visual ergonomics, reduces eye strain and allows the screen to adapt to current lighting conditions, and overall improves user comfort at night or in dark environments

Lantek Analytics

Lantek sees cloud-based solutions as the future of software. The solutions are accessible around the clock from any location, save the cost of expensive hardware and are flexible in their capacity. Updates and new applications can also be easily implemented, which drastically reduces operating costs. Global Release 2021 introduces the first SaaS (Software as a Service) application in Lantek Analytics.

• access to this application possible from any device, from any place and at any time
• more than 70 KPIs and 10 filters make visible what is currently happening in the factory
• 8 additional KPIs and a KPI self-service - define your own KPIs from hundreds of available parameters via a simple wizard interface

Lantek iQuoting and MetalShop

The iQuoting and MetalShop solutions, which are also cloud-based, are used to create quotes for the customer easily, quickly and automatically. Access is possible from any location and any internet-enabled device.

With Lantek MetalShop, customers using iQuoting can take advantage of the round-the-clock availability of e-commerce with online quoting and sales. It is a real opportunity for sheet metal companies to relieve their sales department of the hassle of standard products, while reaching out to new customers and markets that want an online platform.