GUIDE · INVESTMENT ASSESSMENT / 03
The value of an alignment system sits in your production data, not on its price tag. Here are the four items to measure, and how to run the calculation for your own line.
Commercial assessment
When two quotations sit side by side, everyone knows where the eye goes. Yet the operational effect of an alignment system shows up far less in the purchase price than in the operations repeated every day . That is why we suggest assessing it across four items.
The easiest item to measure. Time every product change for a week with a stopwatch and take the average. Then multiply:
Changes per day × average setup time × working days = hours spent on setup per year.
Part of that time is mechanical and will not change. A visible reference acts on the measurement-transfer and verification steps, reducing manual setup steps — in practice a band between a third and a half of the total.
An alignment error becomes scrap in two ways: slits that fall outside tolerance, and the first misaligned metres. The second is the more damaging, because most plants book it as “normal start-up loss” and never record it separately.
To measure it: for one month, record how many metres go to scrap after each product change. How far that figure falls once an alignment reference is in place shows how much avoidable start-up waste the investment can reduce.
The changeovers where the setup does not hold first time. Because nobody records it, most assessments treat it as zero; the rate we see on site is anything but negligible.
For one month, count only this: in how many product changes was the setup done a second time? That number is a direct indicator of how repeatable your measurement and verification steps are.
Is setup time the same as line downtime? On some lines the preparation runs while production continues (external setup); on others the production line must stop (internal setup). In the second case setup time is a direct loss of capacity, multiplied by the hourly value of production.
| Item | How to measure | Multiplied by |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Minutes per changeover | Changes per day × working days |
| Scrap | Scrap metres after a changeover | Material cost per metre |
| Rework | Changeovers that went to a second round | Average setup time |
| Downtime | Minutes the line is stopped | Hourly production value |
You get it wrong in both directions. A plant that does not measure either drops the investment as unnecessary, because it cannot see the gain, or commits with an inflated expectation and ends up disappointed.
To be clear: not every line produces a meaningful gain. On a single-slit line with wide tolerances that changes product a few times a month, a visible reference returns little. Better to say so up front than to discuss it afterwards.
Product changes per day · average setup time · average scrap after a changeover · the hourly production value of the line. With those four numbers we can build an assessment on your data rather than on a general promise.
We walk through where the losses actually sit, step by step, in Where Does Changeover Time Actually Go? .
Share your alignment requirements and we will assess the laser layout, the motion architecture and the automation interfaces for your application together.
GET IN TOUCHFor short definitions of the terms used in this article, see the alignment glossary .
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