SAW relies on ARDIS® to maximize the efficiency of their automatic Homag line ——

Based on the island of Malta, SAW has been active on the local contract market for almost thirty years, focusing on the interior furnishing of hotels, restaurants and bars. Customers include well-known brands like Hilton, Marriot, Hyatt Regency and Starbucks.


High-volume production thanks to brand-new automatic Homag line ——
Three years ago in 2020 the family-owned business invested in a brand-new automatic Homag line. Production manager Gilbert Attard: “Instead of having to outsource an important part of the production to Italy, we now hold everything into our own hands. The line produces an average of 600 parts a day and can be operated by just 3 people.” Although all the equipment comes from Homag, SAW decided to use ARDIS® software to control the entire line.

—— “Production software is more than just giving the right instructions to the right machines at the right time. ARDIS® does exactly that, but at the same time allows you to do various integrations and optimizations on a higher level. This is how we get the most out of our machinery.”

Gilbert Attard, production manager SAW

State-of-the-art Homag line

The production line at SAW includes a STORETEQ warehouse, a SAWTEQ B300 beam saw, an impressive EDGETEQ edgebander including a squaring unit, a huge automated SORTEQ sorter system, a BHX500 throughfeed drilling machine and a DRILLTEQ D-510 dowelling station. Next to that there are two stand-alone CNC-machines: a big 5-axis CENTATEQ E310 and a vertical DRILLTEQ V500.

Seamless integration with TopSolid ——
All projects are designed and detailed in TopSolid Wood. Once everything is ready for production the info is seamlessly exported to OPTIMIZER. Apart from some obvious functionalities like checking the available STOCK, calculating cutting patterns and generating the correct machine files, a lot of extra magic is done here to increase the efficiency of the entire production process.

Minimizing throughput time. The CAM CENTER module in ARDIS® automatically distributes all CNC-instructions for each part over a minimum number of machines. This ensures that parts take the shortest possible route.

More about CAM CENTER  ›

Maximizing outfeed capacity. ARDIS® controls and makes use of the huge sorter with a buffer capacity of around 800 parts to switch the production logic from grouping by material (maximizing cutting efficiency), to grouping by project and cabinet (maximizing outfeed efficiency). This avoids sorting issues and bottlenecks at the assembly station.
100% traceability thanks to PERFORM - After launching a project into production you don’t want to lose sight of it. Here again ARDIS® has the perfect solution with PERFORM. Every time a machine processes a part, feedback is posted to the system. Through some intelligently crafted overview screens and dashboards SAW tracks and traces each and every part / project within their production facility.

PERFORM, our MES-solution  ›
Partnership with ARDIS® ——
Gilbert Attard: “Our partnership with ARDIS® went smoothly. In about two months we moved from a rough plan to a fully operational system. ARDIS® is the perfect marriage between ready-to-use software products on the one hand, and experienced technicians creating a solution that really fits your needs on the other. Today we are in full control of the implementation and can easily make our own adjustments.”

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