Organizing and keeping track of your tooling inventory can be a hassle, especially when you reach the size of our machine shop. We found a great solution in the Matrix Maxi by PF Markey, a digital tooling vending machine. The Maxi holds up to 700 tools like end mills, inserts and more, and with a digital interface we can easily scroll through our tooling options, select one and the Maxi opens right to the correct tool.
Video Transcript:
“How do you keep track of all your cutting tools and inserts? How do you know what you have, and how much of it you have?
I want to show you what China Precision Parts did to take their organized hot mess tooling and turn it into a tool management system, make tools available at a point of use, all while reducing the overall cost. Check this out!
As China Precision Parts grew from a small wee machine shop to who we are today, like many other companies, we had growing pains. One of those areas that we struggled with was keeping track of our tooling, especially our inserts, end mills, and other perishable tooling. Sure, we had Lista cabinet versus Lisat cabinet with “organized drawers” keeping track of tooling. But did we really have any idea what we had, and how much we had? Hell no.
Oh, let’s not forget seeing your boss’s face like he just stepped in a pile of dog ____ because he sees another tooling package come off the UPS truck labeled red. Not cheap. So to increase our boss’s lifespan, we worked with our tooling suppliers and integrated the Matrix Maxi.
The maxi is a tool vending machine that allows you to hold all your various cutting tools, no matter its shape and size. This makes it the ultimate storage unit.
Matrix offers various systems, but the Maxi that we have here contains over 700 bins. That’s a lot of expensive tooling. This software makes it easier on the machinist, all while making it easy for purchasing to manage the inventory and ensure that we have all the proper tooling when we need it. You’re also able to analyze tooling to ensure that the proper inventory is being managed. The system can even alert purchasing when a certain tool is running low.
So after a lot of help with our tooling vendor implementing the Maxi, we quickly filled it up with all of our key tooling, and we quickly realized a few things.
One, we saw a huge cost savings because we started purchasing what we actually needed.
Two, the machinists were no longer wasting time digging through random drawers looking for the tooling that they needed.
Three, everything was available here, which reduced the amount of times that we saw machines get stopped because we didn’t have the tooling and we’re waiting for it to come in the next day.
Lastly, we added 3.6 years to our boss’s lifespan because we seldom use UPS red shipments. That’s a win-win.”