Tool & Resource Management

Managing Tools & Resources in Manufacturing

Managing resources such as cutting tools and fixtures are an important aspect of any manufacturing company. These resources are used to design and produce the company’s final product. However, the management of the information for these resources does not always receive the same amount of time and attention as does other data, such as product design. For example, product design data is typically stored within a revision-controlled IT environment, such as Siemens Teamcenter. Meanwhile, manufacturing engineers and NC programmers are retrieving the virtual cutting tools used in the creation of the NC programs from personal databases or creating them as they are needed. All these physical tools and fixtures are scattered around the manufacturing facility, and with no central environment in which they are managed, there is no way for anyone to track where these resources are or how many exist. When one of these resources is needed, a shop floor operator must stop producing the part and begin the search to find the required tool. If the search comes up empty, production must once again stop and wait for the shipment to arrive.

Solutions for Tool & Resource Management

The right Tool & Resource Management solution is critical to creating and managing an efficient shop floor environment. Managing the lifecycle of tens, hundreds or even thousands of tools is a complex task, and integrating these systems with IT can be even more challenging. Paper-based, labor-intensive tool management systems are simple not efficient enough for today’s sophisticated shop floor. The need to reduce scrap, streamline projects and lower costs is paramount. Engineering designs and implements the leading software tools for Manufacturing Tool & Resource Management, helping customers create and maintain a complete digital tool library integrated to their PLM, MES and data management environment.

Tool and resource data can be brought in and managed alongside of design data within PLM. All resources stored within the digital tool library will contain defining attributes that would be used to search and filter for the desired item. This allows users to easily manage tooling components and assemblies, interface with tooling vendor catalogs, save time when looking for resource data and reuse proven processes and resources.

Tool & Resource Management systems automate the organization, purchasing, calibration, tracking, location and lifecycle for multiple tools and cribs. Authorized personnel can monitor the entire workflow, including tool inventory management, availability and tool issuing. Tool & Resource Management libraries are even more powerful when integrated with MES and other manufacturing systems and processes, including:

Process Planning - allow engineers to assign resources to manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBOM), allow NC programmers to use tool assemblies to create NC programs, run analyses to determine which processes or operations need to be updated to reduce time to production
Production scheduling - in order to plan the use of specific tools on production runs
Job tracking – to know when and where tools were used or changed on each production run
Asset register – to capture more detail about the tool
Production counting – to capture lifetime cycle and part counts
Quality – to record measurements against the tool and track performance
SPC – real-time SPC charts from all quality data to alert operatives if measured values break control limits or trend rules
Maintenance – to plan maintenance for your tools

Features of Tool & Resource Management

Record/update information about each tool
Tools can be grouped into sets, where collections of tools are used together
Track tool usage and life
Manage multi-cavity/die tools
Track tools as they are used in processes – when they are loaded and unloaded
Know how many parts and/or cycles they have made to monitor tool life
Monitor the status of the tools - when they are usable, when they are unusable, when they need repair
Know where the tools are by tracking locations
Reporting
Insight into current level of tool inventory
Complete traceability history of each tool

Benefits of Tool & Resource Management

Efficient tool tracking – track your tools, know where they are, where they have been used
Go paperless – if that is how you record the use of tools today
Faster change-overs – see when tool changes are coming up and mobilize accordingly
Visibility – everyone can see where the tools are and what state they are in
Improve quality – track measurements by tool and cavity, monitor degradation, make better decisions on when to maintain
Traceability – know what products were made with what tool and when