Design of a tooling database implementation for an existing facility

One of the most critical resources for many manufacturing facilities is tooling. To properly control tooling and make tool-related data available to different manufacturing activities, tooling databases are often employed. Implementing a tooling database around computer hardware/software in an existing facility, however, can be difficult. This paper describes how one U.S. aircraft component manufacturer tackled problems encountered in trying to implement a single tooling database in their facility. Three problems were found: some tooling data were already located in another database; one software application requiring tooling data already had its own internal database; and various computer hardware platforms were used in different departments, making a single interface difficult. The problems were solved by employing two databases, via various software agents, and creating a platform-independent interface to the primary database. The resulting implementation proved a viable approach for the facility, and provides a good example of how such database implementation problems can be handled.