Product category:
Tool management systems
News Release from: RealVision | Subject: ProDocTivity ToolManager software
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 30 October 2003
Tool management software reduces tooling
stocks
Parker Hannifin, Aerospace Group has shown a tremendous reduction in tooling inventory and has freed-up valuable floorspace with the implementation of tool management software.
Parker Hannifin, Aerospace Group, located in Irvine, California has shown a tremendous reduction in tooling inventory and has freed-up valuable floorspace with the implementation of ProDocTivity ToolManager software from RealVision, Eagle, Idaho The Aerospace Group of Parker Hannifin Corporation is a leader in the development, design, manufacture, and service of control systems and components for aerospace and related high-technology markets
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 10 Oct 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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In 1996 the Group recognized that they needed to control their tooling inventory, tooling costs and machine downtime, and set out on a search for Tool Crib Management to achieve these goals.
The company realized that not only could it not calculate its tooling cost per component, but it also could not control its purchasing process.
To obtain optimum stock levels, they needed to streamline their tooling suppliers, of which there were many, to streamline their tooling suppliers and maximize their buying power.
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Dan Girdner, Senior Tool Engineer, with extensive experience dealing with the tooling industry, was assigned with the task of bringing their tooling under control.
"We decided that we wanted to maintain a minimum of tool suppliers and we looked to set up a co-operative rather than a partnership.
We wanted to select primary tool suppliers, each providing their specific "best-in-class" products that could provide tooling on a "just in time" basis.
Once they had orchestrated this and chosen their primary tooling suppliers, they wanted to automate their tooling process and began the search for a Tool Management system.
They looked at every Tool Management system available.
After extensive evaluations, they decided on the ToolManagerO system from RealVision, a decision based on functionality and RealVision's willingness to further develop the system to Parker Hannifin's requirements and "because it was the only fully WindowsO compliant system on the market." All their tools were identified with a random number and they needed a system that would incorporate smart tool coding, "a system that was intelligent enough to identify the tools by the tool ID." The ToolManagerO software has a user configurable "tool wizard" which creates a consistent and meaningful Tool ID, and description, ensuring every user creates and accesses Tools in the same way, thus avoiding costly duplication of data in a system with literally thousands of tooling items.
"Our main goal in utilizing the ToolManager system was to decrease our stock of tools in 6 different toolcribs.
We were previously ordering either too much or too little to satisfy our needs.
Now with the visibility of seeing exactly what we had in each toolcrib we've been able to refine our actual requirements.
By implementing the ToolManager software, alternative tool suppliers can be set up in advance, so if one supplier cannot deliver to our time and costs, we can automatically switch to an alternative, thereby giving us optimum stock levels.".
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