Greycon is happy to announce the 8.5 release of its suite, which is notable for a significant reduction to the number of cutting patterns in our trim optimisation algorithms. The improvements have been benchmarked in a test suite of hard problems to be 9% lower than the previous version (8.4) and 18% lower against all previous versions. The reductions have key practical benefits for most of Greycon’s customers, as the number of cutting patterns is positively correlated to the workload of the slitter / winder crew. The savings have been achieved without any deterioration in waste performance. The trim optimisation algorithm is shared across all Greycon products (X-Trim, opt-Studio and GreyconMill), so the benefits are available to all customers.

In parallel, Greycon’s products have been adopted by numerous new customers in 2015, including AJ Oster (USA), Caprihans (India), Copamex (Mexico), Khanna Paper (India), SKC (USA), Taghleef (Spain) and Trident Paper (India). Existing customers have also extended their implementation to additional plants, including Arjo Wiggins (UK), GGB (China), Koehler (Germany) and Prolamsa (US & Mexico).

Commenting on developments, Greycon’s CEO Constantine Goulimis says:

“In a business like ours, project flow is uneven and sometimes difficult to manage psychologically. Our mitigation strategy is to have very conservative finances; we are also buffered by long-term support contracts from our loyal customer base. Still, we got very excited at the beginning of the year at the prospect of a very big project, which unfortunately did not materialise. Although Q1 was almost devoid of new projects, Q2 has been just the opposite. Both our global footprint and continued investment resulting in functional superiority factor into this.

Testament to our expertise and leaving no doubt that our solutions can lead to material benefits, one of our customers recently shared a year-long analysis of results; by their measurements, overall machine utilisation increased from 97.4% to 97.6% – this small difference translates to 3,000 tonnes of less waste. Our work of course never ceases: since the 8.5 release in May 2015 we are releasing today (26th June 2015) the 8.5 P01 version; this contains an additional 1% reduction in the number of cutting patterns.”

Supported customers can obtain the latest version automatically through the web update process.