Nearly all high-volume manufactured parts require some type of special tooling. Major manufacturers in all industries own thousands of tools representing an enormous investment. Tooling assets in the form of molds, dies, fixtures, patterns, templates, gauges, and dedicated automation are required to form, assemble, inspect and package products. Many companies fail to adequately manage their tooling assets after production begins relying instead on suppliers to manage these assets.

Existing tooling directly affects the supply, cost, and quality of products currently in production. Parts and assemblies simply cannot be made without these tools. Detailed knowledge of location, specifications, designs, condition, and maintenance offers opportunities to lower risk, control cost, and improve processes.

Searching and documenting existing tools places a huge burden on internal engineering, purchasing, and quality departments.  Gathering tooling information internally and at remote supplier sites is a daunting task. Site audits are slow and expensive.  Spreadsheets and local database systems require development, training, and constant maintenance. Information is static and quickly becomes outdated.  

Technology has changed nearly every aspect of how we execute manufacturing. By employing current technologies and a new approach, tooling information can now be efficiently captured, accessed, and analyzed in real time. The ToolView system lowers cost, improves data quality, and dramatically shortens the time, effort and cost required to build your tooling asset information system.

ToolView builds a global comprehensive and up-to-date data warehouse of tooling information accessible from any computer or mobile device. Users have immediate access to tool descriptions, specifications, designs, photos, operational videos, and maintenance events.  Information is easily searched, viewed, shared, and analyzed for real productivity improvement.