What sense did it make to produce a piece quickly if the times involved in loading and unloading the machine, production changeover, handling or packaging were much higher?

I began to understand which were the right questions to ask, starting with the size of the lots, the management of production before and after the machine and from the number of production changeovers.

Productivity often, if not always, clashed with the flexibility required of the process.

There were two main production systems in the sheet metal processing sector: one was sheet-fed with numerical control punching machines (for low production and high flexibility), and the other was coil-fed with a press and progressive dies (for high production, but with low flexibility).

The introduction of the parametric coil-fed punching systems introduced great benefits in terms of savings on raw materials, as well as huge increases in productivity and flexibility!