Cut Long Products (Optimisation)

Cut Long Products turns your current inventory and open orders into an optimised cutting plan. Reach it from the Dashboard shortcut or by expanding Production Planning in the left navigation and selecting Cut long products.

What is Cutting Optimisation?

When you have long steel bars in stock and need to cut them into shorter pieces for orders, there are many ways to do it — some waste far more material than others. The optimiser automatically works out how to cut the bars you have to produce the pieces your orders need, while minimising waste.

For example: if you have 12m bars and need pieces at 3.5m and 4m, the optimiser works out how many bars to use and how to cut each one to leave as little offcut as possible.

Starting a Run

The Production Planning page is a dashboard of past runs. Select New run to open a four-step wizard:

1. Scope — optionally start from a saved filter profile, then set:
   • Inventory filters — narrow by Type, Material, Stock Location, Supplier, and a diameter range. Leave any of these empty to include everything. The diameter range also applies to order lines, so a run limited to 8 mm only plans 8 mm demand.
   • Order filters — narrow by line item status, tags, and a delivery date range. Completed and cancelled line items, and any line item on a closed order, are always excluded regardless of this filter.
2. Priorities & settings —
   • Priorities — Order urgency (currently based on delivery date) and how order lines with no grade are allocated to a grade group (oldest stock or cheapest stock).
   • Kerf (mm) — the saw-blade width lost per cut. This comes from your company settings and is applied automatically; it’s shown read-only and can’t be edited per run.
   • Advanced solver settings (collapsed by default) — population size, max iterations, time limit, and offcut threshold. Leave these blank; most companies never need to change the solver’s defaults.
3. Preview — every group the solver will work through, with stock/demand bars and order counts. Untick a group to leave it out of this run without changing your Scope filters — useful for trimming a run’s scope before committing it to the solver.
4. Review & start — a final summary of your profile, filters, priorities, and included/excluded groups. Optionally check Save these settings as a profile to reuse this exact setup later. Select Start run to dispatch.

Reusing Filters with a Filter Profile

If you regularly plan with the same filters and priorities, select a profile on the Scope step to apply it instantly, or check Save these settings as a profile on Review & start to name and store your current settings for next time.

Any inventory or order filter you change after selecting a profile overrides just that field for the current run — the saved profile itself is never modified. Priorities stay locked to the profile’s values while it’s selected; advanced solver settings start from the profile but can be adjusted per run without changing the saved profile.

Running the Optimiser

Once you select Start run, you’ll see a confirmation screen, then return to the Production Planning dashboard. The new run appears in the list with a status of Dispatched, and progresses to Result received while the solver works — select Refresh to check on progress.

A run ends in one of these states:

• Plan ready — a full production plan was created and is ready to review.
• Partial plan ready — a plan was created, but not every order or piece of inventory could be included (for example, insufficient matching stock).
• Solve failed or Failed — the run couldn’t produce a usable plan.
• Cancelled — the run was stopped before it completed.

Select View plan on any run that produced a plan to open its details.

Reviewing a Production Plan

A newly created plan is in Draft status. The plan header shows its name, status, and a summary of total bars, total cuts, and overall waste percentage.

Below that, a table lists every bar in the plan — the inventory item it comes from, bar number, length, stock location, supplier, and whether it’s pinned. Expand any bar row to see its cutting pattern: the length and quantity of each cut, the order line item it fulfils, and its review status (Proposed, Accepted, or Rejected), along with the resulting offcut and scrap for that bar.

While the plan is still Draft, select Reject next to any cut to exclude it from the plan — its order line item returns to being unmatched rather than discarding the whole plan. Select Accept to reverse a rejection.

Approving or Discarding a Plan

• Approve locks in the cutting pattern. Bars in the plan can then be marked as started on the shop floor.
• Discard cancels the plan without affecting your inventory or orders. This is available for both Draft and Approved plans.

Running the Plan on the Shop Floor

Once a plan is approved, each bar’s row gains a Start button. Selecting it marks the bar as Started. When cutting is finished, select Complete on that same row to mark the bar as Completed.

Common Questions

What if the run can’t use all my inventory?

The optimiser only includes bars that can efficiently produce the pieces your selected orders need. Anything left over stays in your inventory, untouched.

What if there isn’t enough matching inventory to fulfil my orders?

You’ll get a Partial plan ready run — it covers what the available inventory allows, and the remaining orders will need more stock before they can be planned.

Can I adjust a cutting pattern manually?

Not directly — the patterns come from the solver. If a plan isn’t right for your situation, reject the individual cuts you don’t want and start a new run with different filters, priorities, or advanced solver settings.

Can I keep multiple runs and compare them?

Yes. Every run stays in the Production Planning table with its own status and, once complete, its own plan — start several runs with different filters and compare their waste percentages before deciding which plan to approve.