Lantek has 28,000 clients worldwide, using its Expert software to drive their CNC machinery and, internationally, it has seen a 25% increase in its digitalisation business as companies realise how much difference starting on the path to a Smart Factory can make to profitability and efficiency. In the UK alone, 2021 saw a record turnover of over 1 million euro and a significant rise in interest in KPI analysis and digitalization.
The Lantek Expert and Lantek Flex3d CAD/CAM solutions give companies the ability to automatically create CNC programs for virtually every sheet metal machine on the market and its advanced nesting software ensures that material utilization is maximized. Building on the technology and capabilities of this software, companies can start by adding Smart quotation modules to quickly and accurately generate quotations for customers. They can then move on to Lantek MES which keeps track of scheduling and machine OEE and then to Lantek’s cloud-based analytics software which will help them to understand the KPIs that are important to their company for both customer and manufacturing management.
Rob Powell, commercial director, Lantek UK, said: “Making use of data about your customers and the performance of your machinery and resources in an intelligent and automated way is clearly the way to make a major change in efficiency and profitability. We can help companies in the industry take the first steps towards a Smart Factory, picking elements that suit their current manufacturing status and which are relevant to their businesses. With this approach we can work in partnership to develop a plan which will be easier to implement, and which will clearly show the benefits of the technology at each step.”
To increase its technology leadership Lantek has a long-term plan for growth and investment in R&D which extends to 2025. Alberto López de Biñaspre, managing director of Lantek explained: “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 have traditionally invested large proportions of our income 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%. To do this, we plan to grow our workforce by 50% over the next twelve months from the current 260 employees worldwide, with a clear emphasis on R&D and our international customer support team.”
As part of this initiative, Lantek will be growing its over 150 OEM partnerships to deliver an open system which can drive almost every sheet metal cutting machine on the market.
MACH 2022 will give companies in the sheet metal sector an opportunity to find out how Lantek delivers the flexibility of being able to choose the best and most cost-effective machinery for their application and run it at its full potential. They will also be able to see the benefits of introducing Smart Factory techniques which give a clear path to much higher efficiencies, greater customer loyalty, increased order levels and greater profitability.
