Original Date: 10/07/2002
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

General Tool Company has integrated its tooling, engineering, and programming functions in conjunction with the implementation of Cribware software and has experienced annual savings of approximately $300,000 per year.

General Tool Company (GTC) was maintaining a $600,000 tooling inventory that contained a large number of obsolete and infrequently used tools. In addition, while tool crib software was being used, it was out of date and contained corrupted data. As a result, special tools were insufficiently tracked, which led to them often being misplaced and inappropriately reordered for subsequent jobs.

GTC entered into an integrated supply agreement with Dayton Supply and Tool (DST), which included the installation and maintenance of Cribware software for controlling inventory and documenting the tooling requirements associated with specific jobs. DST provided the software, user training, and system implementation as well as worked with GTC to update the existing tooling database, barcode the tooling inventory, purge the existing inventory of obsolete tooling, and provide a means to prepare and track tool kits.

This upgrade of the tool crib operations also gave GTC the opportunity to standardize the indexable tooling, performance drills, and carbide milling cutters as well as reduce inventory. In addition, the tool tracking capability led to the ability to balance tool purchasing with tool consumption and to identify usage by department, task, individual, etc. This led to a significantly reduced expendable cost per manufacturing hour and an improved job estimating capability. Cribware software has experienced annual savings of approximately $300,000 per year.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.