The ANDIAMO partnership between Sescoi, Erowa, Zwicker Systems, and Cimatech was created to promote best practice, state of the art automation within the mold and tool making industry.
Cimatech, a moldmaker based near Salzburg in Austria, has embraced the ANDIAMO concept, using it in its day-to-day manufacture to achieve a 50% increase in productivity and a 70% reduction in through put time, all in a paperless production environment. The aim of ANDIAMO, to create a fully automated mold and die shop which integrates the physical technical world with planning and management, has been achieved at Cimatech, where the company, which specialises in the manufacturing of electrodes, produces up to 12,000 electrodes per production cell each year. The four partner companies worked closely together to make the concept a reality.

Real time data is fed back into WorkPLAN job management system via microchips fitted to each component by the technical automation solution JMSPro from Zwicker systems and Erowa.

Detailed and live information of progress in the workshop allows managers to respond quickly to the changing situation, coordinating job and time management, manufacturing monitoring, scheduling, planning, CAD/CAM integration, manual and CNC manufacturing, inspection, and part identification into a homogeneous process.

The ANDIAMO partnership is inviting toolmaking companies to their 'eye-opening' seminars at Cimatech's Salzburg site so that they can experience the ANDIAMO concept, at first hand and 'hands-on', building a part of a simple tool themselves from scratch in one and a half days.

Additionally, the ANDIAMO partnership can carry out appraisal and technology transfer for toolmaking companies to establish the most suitable combination of equipment and software necessary to automate their complete tool manufacturing processes.

ANDIAMO also shows how mold makers should integrate their own customers and suppliers to benefit from an as yet unknown supply-chain-management concept for the tooling industry.

Closing the loop in tool manufacture at Cimatech shows how automation and control can produce some spectacular results, accurately managing an inherently complex set of events.

Cimatech are running at full capacity and are benefiting from very worthwhile cost savings and productivity improvements, helping them to stay way ahead of their competitors.