In a cutting workshop, material is between 40 % and 60 % of the cost of a part. And yet the decision of how to lay the parts out on the sheet is usually made in thirty seconds and without data.
Good versus bad nesting
70 % utilisation and 85 % utilisation do not sound that different written down. In money: on a 3 mm steel sheet of 2×1 m, those 15 points are almost 7 kg of material per sheet. Multiply by the sheets you cut every month.
Three things almost nobody checks
1. Nest orders together, not parts in isolation
Two orders in the same material and thickness, cut on the same day but on different sheets, are throwing money away. Grouping before cutting is the biggest and most ignored lever.
2. Offcuts that are genuinely reusable
Not everything left over is an offcut: an 800×400 mm rectangle is useful next month, a 40 mm strip is scrap. Registering the offcuts that are actually worth keeping — with size and material — turns waste into stock.
3. Quantity changes unit price more than you think
Ten parts may not fill a sheet: you pay for the whole sheet, or for the part that becomes unusable. A hundred parts fill it and unit price drops sharply, without touching machine or material. If your quote does not reflect that, you are either expensive on long runs or cheap on short ones.
What to demand from your system
That it nests for real and shows you the layout; that it groups compatible lines and computes the saving; that it tracks usable offcuts; and that it re-prices when quantity changes, because utilisation changes with it.
Sheet utilisation is one of the few improvements that requires buying nothing. Just stop deciding by eye.