LineSight vs CoilTrim: Two Ways to Plan Coil Cutting at a Service Center

What CoilTrim does well

CoilTrim has been in the field long enough to build a real install base. Tieto lists more than 50 implementations across several countries and describes the product as getting more out of every coil by turning complex cutting challenges into simple, optimised plans. It optimizes for waste in both directions, lengthwise and widthwise, as well as profit, knife changes and setups.

It typically shows five candidate solutions that a planner can compare and edit by hand, which keeps the planner in the decision rather than handing over a single answer.

Its advanced functions cover things many optimizers leave out. It can account for coil defects, plan make-to-stock side runs, and, through an optional coil ordering module, find the best coil sizes to buy within a range you set. The interface runs in English, Finnish, French, German, Spanish and Italian, with more on request, and Excel can carry short trials. A Copilot add-on, listed by SoftwareOne as built on the GPT-4o model, answers documentation and workflow questions and builds ad-hoc graphical reports. Tieto says customers typically save more than 1 percent of input material.

Where CoilTrim stops short for a metal service center

• It runs on Windows. That suits a planning office with managed desktops, and it means orders, coils and finished plans move between CoilTrim and the ERP through interfaces someone has to set up and keep running.
• Tieto says CoilTrim works with ERP and planning systems and with some metals-specific systems, but the product page does not name which ones.
• We found no named customers or case studies, so we could not tie the more-than-1-percent figure to a published operation.
• The product page does not mention PIW or coil-weight limits. That does not mean CoilTrim lacks them; ask in a demo.
• The Copilot covers documentation and reporting. We found no mention of it handling order entry.

How LineSight works differently

LineSight runs in the browser and starts from the ERP. Open orders and coil inventory come in in real time, the planner picks the orders to fill, and LineSight's optimization engine builds the plan against gauge, width, grade, PIW, ID/OD, coil weight, knife setups, min and max mults, edge conditioning and lead times. Every plan shows what is cut from which coil and why. A person approves it before anything reaches the ERP or the floor, and work orders, PDF plans and ERP updates then go out in one click.

Where CoilTrim shows five candidates, LineSight puts the trade-offs on one plan. A pattern card shows scrap percentage, lead time, freight, material buy and profit on the order, so the planner can see what the yield costs or earns. When the planner overrides a width or a pattern, later plans respect it, so the corrections accumulate instead of being made again every morning.

LineSight does not publish a coil-defect constraint or a coil-size selection module. Its Command Center handles the purchasing workflow instead: it flags shortages, builds the buy and sends RFQs to mills or brokers, and a person accepts the quote. That is a different tool from CoilTrim's width-sizing math.

Where each one fits on the floor

A coil with a known edge defect

CoilTrim handles coil defects explicitly in its advanced functions. LineSight does not list defects among its published constraints, so if defect-aware planning matters to you, bring a defective coil and its orders to the demo and see what comes back.

Deciding which master widths to buy next quarter

CoilTrim's coil ordering module is built for this question. Our guide to reducing slitting scrap makes the same point from the planning side: buy widths that nest with your repeat order book, which may not be the widths that look standard. LineSight's part is downstream, turning shortages into a buy and RFQs for a person to approve.

A mixed order book on INVEX

LineSight is live with INVEX, so orders and inventory arrive without an export and the approved plan goes back as work orders. With CoilTrim, the same flow runs through whatever interface you build with Tieto, and the scope of that interface is worth settling early.

Pricing

Can you use both?

Not for the same line. Both want to own the cutting-pattern decision. A business could use CoilTrim's coil ordering module to size purchases while planning daily slitting in LineSight, but we know of no one doing it, and running two optimizers on one order book means two sets of rules to keep in step.

The bottom line

CoilTrim is a mature, multilingual coil optimizer with features LineSight does not publish, coil defects and coil sizing above all. LineSight is built around the ERP and the planner: plans from live data, one approval, and nothing re-keyed. Elite Steel cut its scrap rate 2.9 points and added about $850K in annualized revenue with LineSight, which is one operation and one product mix. Run your own orders through both before deciding. For the two standalone optimizers head to head, see Fast-Square vs CoilTrim.