Tool Management

A comprehensive cutting tool management system is important for a successful operation of a flexible manufacturing system. Tool management can be described as the ability of having the correct tools on the suitable machines at the right time when maintaining acceptable use of manufacturing resources. One of the basic objectives of tool management is to make sure that tooling is never cause for delays in the production schedule.

The following statistics point out the requirement and significance of cutting tool management:

1. 30% to 60 % of a shop's tooling inventory is somewhere on the shop floor along with most of it placed in the toolboxes.

2. 16 % of production demand cannot be met since the tooling is not available.

3. 40% to 80 % of production supervision time is spent to search the proper materials and cutting tools.

4. In a number of plants, operators spend 20% of their time to search cutting tools.

5. Annual budget for tooling, jigs, fixtures, consumable supplies, and spare parts of a metalworking firm is 7 to 12 times larger than its entire capital-equipment budget.

In a common machining system, actual cutting time is in between 5 to 20 % of average machine utilization time. Non-productive areas in which machine utilization levels can be increased that include tool setting, tool changing, and part loading.