Component manufacturers are continually improving production environments to optimize performance in order to maintain market position. Planning and organizational tools are essential for streamlining the production workflow. Wall panel projects in particular require careful planning in order to ensure optimal efficiencies in manufacturing and installing.
When manufacturing a wall panel project, all production panels must be organized into bundles for cutting, assembly, delivery, and installation. Proper panel bundling is as important for manufacturing as it is for installation crews. An error in the bundling results in issues within the production line, materials, shipping, storage, and an overall poor installation experience onsite. Organizing the wall panels into bundles is a tedious, cumbersome process for panel designers—often taking hours. In a recent IntelliVIEW® Suite (22.01) release, a new tool was introduced in iPanel that improves panel manufacturing and installation—the Panel Stacker.
The Panel Stacker
The Panel Stacker introduces a set of tools and workflows for panel designers to easily organize, bundle, and stack wall panels and beams automatically, semiautomatically, or manually—ultimately allowing designers to sequence panels and automate bundling in the required order for onsite installation.
Layout View and Stacking Tools
The new interface effortlessly creates bundles automatically with one simple click per level. Each bundle or group created follows a smart sequence identifying exterior and interior production lines. Designers are afforded the ultimate flexibility with the manual, semi, and automatic aids. The Layout View and Stack Grid utilize colors for bundles and panels to help designers quickly identify elements during pre-production audit. The Stack Grid control will also provide the needed information for proper load balancing for shipping. The Stack Location Notes feature marks the ultimate location of the stack for onsite installation.
Stack View and Panel Tools
The Stack Elevation View will show all the panels within a stack and provide important information for the designer (e.g., panel label, length, openings, sheathing, angle cut, and framing details). Panels will be highlighted with colors to quickly identify problems, variation of the most common height, rotated panels, among others. The Stack View is a visual representation of the stack, allowing designers to move panels with ease to a precise position within a stack, from stack to stack, top to bottom or bottom to top, left to right, rotate the panels and/or beams, or add forklift blocks— the flexibility is yours. Lastly, designers will be able to apply global modifications to panel labels to improve sequencing. Panel Stacker simplifies the bundling and stacking process—saving time panel designers spend on creating bundles and stacking while minimizing the potential issues executing the project. Contact your local Alpine® Sales Representative about how to leverage these tools to improve your business today.
Watch our video to see how the Panel Stacker can automatically visualize and stack panels for seamless production and shipping.