West Coast Chipmaker Inc. (name changed) after 3 years of working with ToolsUnited now has 3,500 tool assemblies and nearly the same amount of single items in the tooling database. “That’s weird”, wonders CAM engineer Laura, “doesn’t sound like standard. Do we build every tool assembly from scratch?” That’s alarming, because redundant items will result in hidden cost. Why?
💸 Fragmented purchasing,
📦 overstocked shelves and
🤯 confusion about what to use.
CAM engineer Laura starts to investigate. “How many 0,5 inch drills are in our inventory? How can I say exactly which one is used for which job?” She starts to run through the process plans to find the relation of each tool assembly to the workpieces it is applied and to the machines on which it operates. A relation between product, process and resources. “Wait a minute! PPR-relation, isn’t that a term used in the context of ToolsUnited?”
Time for another up-grade. The engineering module extents the database beyond tools to include the CNCs and the workpieces. It helps to establish the required relationships between these objects. With a clear view of the Product–Process–Resource relationships, Laura now can:
✔️ Run a smart “where-used” analysis for each tool
✔️ Identify obsolete and redundant tools
✔️ Consolidate the tooling inventory to fewer items
✔️ Improve purchasing leverage with fewer, preferred suppliers
No more confusion”. “When I set up a machine, I find out which tools I need for each workpiece and calculate all the speeds and feeds. And I store this information for later reference. I make sure I don’t miss anything if a colleague of mine has already done a similar setup “Each CAM engineer uses the the same ToolsUnited account.
What a drive for standardization!
WestCoast has reduced the number of items we use by 20%. That means a significant reduction in tool expenditure. At West Coast is was easily 10%.of the annual tool spent of $50,000 per CNC. That’s 60,000 dollars for that year! Only for that year?
Most likely yes, because “weeding through the tool inventory is like going to the hairdresser. You have to do it once in while”.
CIMSOURCE
CIMSOURCE’s standards and technologies are key to synchronize the master data management of tool suppliers and the manufacturing data management of tool consumers.
Since developing Standard Open Base (StOB) in 1992, CIMSOURCE has been organizing the product databases of tool suppliers, and the tool data of manufacturing operations.
