This leader in valve production employs a tooling stock of 9.000 components and over 10,000 different programs per year. TDM software helped them get a handle on this amazing diversity.

More transparency and efficiency in the management of large tool inventories thanks to central database

Velan, Inc. is a world leader in the design and production of cast and forged severe service valves and steam traps across all major industries. This entails considerable diversity, not only in the products but in the machines and tooling required to make them.

„We use nearly 100 CNC machines and a tooling stock of over 9,000 components, and we employ over 10,000 different programs per year with, as you can imagine multiple program users, in order to manufacture a broad range of types and sizes of steel valves at our two plants in Montreal and our plant in Vermont,“ says Daniel Pagé, Supervisor of CNC Programming for Velan.

Numbers like that proved difficult to manage, and opportunities for greater efficiency emerged. Pagé gives some examples. „All of our plants were doing their own tooling purchasing,“ he says. “The loss of efficiencies in the ordering process and the increasing loss of visibility into our tool stock was forcing us to do something.”

Visibility was limited in-house as well. „Tooling data was kept on paper ‚register cards‘. Though common in the industry, this is a cumbersome and time-consuming way to handle things. And for a company like ours with such a huge volume of individual jobs each year this was also a major time-waste for programming as well.“ Velan, and Pagé looked to TDM Systems Inc. (Schaumburg, IL) for solutions. This was back in 2003 and marked the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership. That relationship continues today.

TDM-Tool Data Management is a software for managing tools and their data company wide. With its centralized database TDM supports tool data like geometry, feeds and speeds and supplier data for all company divisions. The TDM software modules also support the user with specialized functions in the crib, the presetting, on the machine and in the NC programming.

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