Computer Software for Steel Professionals

Structural Material Manager "Big Picture"

This IBM PC-compatible software system, first released in 1985, is designed to help steel professionals - fabricators, suppliers, and detailers - manage structural steel lists. It reduces the man-hours required to process the lists by requiring the operator only to enter the material items and then automatically doing the following:

  • Weighs all steel, stainless and aluminum items.
  • Provides a total material cost for the job.
  • Tallies the shop and field labor hours.
  • Supplies bolt counts for each size bolt.
  • Provides item counts for each material type.
  • Reports a lineal total for each section size.
  • Prints shipping tickets and master shipping lists.
  • Prints a production-control history as a complete shipping status report or just a shortage report.
  • Computes surface areas and actual paint/primer requirements.
  • Sorts items into proper order by material type, section size, length and grade.
  • Nests lineal items into available stock lengths for an optimal cut, whether from in-house inventory, your supplier's stock or the best combination of both.
  • Nests plates into specified sheet sizes and draws a picture of the optimum layout.
  • Prints adhesive item labels based on the Sorted List, Nested List, Master Shipper or Shipping Ticket.

During the estimating phase, Structural Material Manager's Estimating Module helps generate a fast, accurate bid. This module allows the user to enter material prices, shop hours and field hours for each item. This information is then automatically tallied into total job material and labor costs.

Once a job is in production, the system's Production-Control Module lets the user produce both master shipping lists and shipping tickets. It automatically tracks which items have been shipped, the dates they were shipped and which items have not yet shipped. A concise summary of this information lets the user view the job's status at a glance.

The Length-Nesting and Plate-Nesting Modules are useful in both the estimating and production aspects of a job. They use sophisticated mathematical techniques to find the most efficient method to cut a job's items from available stocks. The resulting cut-list can be used to estimate how much material must be procured for a job, or it can be sent directly to the shop as a cutting pattern.

Not only is Structural Material Manager used to process jobs, it is also employed for keeping the company's in-house inventory. This allows an inventory dollar figure to be provided for accounting purposes. It also enables the Length-Nesting Module to utilize inventory lengths and add back any useful remnants (drops) that remain after cutting the items.

The External Data Interface allows users to import items from other software systems. This eliminates the need for re-typing material items into Structural Material Manager while still allowing the package to produce optimum cut-lists, weight and cost estimates, etc. E.J.E. publishes the necessary file structure, and any ASCII text file formatted accordingly can be read into the software. One of the primary uses of this module is CAD interfacing, or more specifically, importing bills of material from a CAD system.