Why a tool room pays off, and how much it can save you
In many shops tools are bought, used and thrown away without anyone being accountable for them. It works, until someone does the maths. Here is what a tool room is, where the money goes without one, and how much you could save, with your own figures.
7 min read
What a tool room is, and what it is not
It is not a stockroom with a locked door. It is the department that makes sure the right tool is ready, measured and in its place when the machine needs it: purchasing, numbering, presetting, regrinding, stock.
It can be one person with a presetting bench or a whole department. Size is not what matters: what matters is that someone is accountable.
Where the money goes without one
Tool consumption: duplicates bought because nobody can find what is already there, tools thrown away while still good, inserts changed halfway through their life just in case.
Machine downtime: the machine waits for the tool, the operator looks for it, measures it at the machine, goes to ask for it. Minutes that show up in no report, but are paid at the machine hourly rate.
Regrinding: solid carbide drills and end mills scrapped when they could be brought back to new at a fraction of the price.
Stock: cabinets full of tools nobody uses any more, money sitting still. Meanwhile the one that is needed is missing.
Mistakes and crashes: a tool mounted at the wrong length breaks a spindle or a finished part. Measuring and checking beforehand lowers the risk.
Why talk about it in euros
Whoever manages the tools already knows all this. Whoever decides whether to open a tool room thinks in money: to convince them you need a number, not a list of good practices. That is what the calculator below is for.
Work out your savings
Enter your own shop figures. The ones already filled in are an example.
ESTIMATED SAVINGS PER YEAR—tool consumption and machine downtime
Assumptions: tooling spend −10%, half of the lost hours recovered, 46 working weeks. They are simple, rounded assumptions, not measured averages: check them against your own shop data. Regrinding, stock and crashes are not counted.
A worked example
An invented but realistic shop: 10 CNC machines, €80,000 of tooling a year, an hour and a half lost per machine per week, €60 an hour machine rate.
Tool consumption: 10% of €80,000 is €8,000.
Machine downtime: 10 machines × 1.5 hours × 46 weeks is 690 hours a year. Recover half of them and 345 hours at €60 make €20,700.
Total: about €28,700 a year, counting only two items out of five. Note where the bulk is: in downtime, not in tools. It is the cost that never shows up on an invoice, which is exactly why nobody looks at it.
When you do not need a tool room
With two or three machines and very repetitive work, a tidy cabinet and someone looking after it once a week is often enough. A tool room starts paying off when there are many machines, frequent job changes, tools shared between departments, or when the lost hours cost more than a dedicated person.
The calculator helps with that too: to see which side you are on before you spend anything.
Where to start
You do not need to start with a whole department. Three steps are enough to begin:
A numbering system, so every tool has one name only: how to set it up.
5S on cabinets and carts, so everything has its place: the guide.
A presetting bench, so tools are prepared off the machine and not while it stands still.
Then measure: how much goes on tooling and how many hours are lost. After six months, do the maths again with real figures.
Every tool room starts with one code for every tool.
What problem it solved, how much time it saves you, what is missing. We read everything. We only publish with your permission, and only the way you choose.
Thank you. We have it: if you allowed publishing, we will write to you to confirm before it goes online.