Tools and Dies That Keep Disappearing Between Shifts
QR for most items, RFID where hands are dirty or gloved
A person holds it, not a department
Both the outgoing and incoming shift confirm
You can see where a missing item was last confirmed
1. The Problem
A press shop or tool room holds hundreds of dies, jigs, fixtures, gauges and hand tools, and they move constantly. A die goes to a machine, then to grinding, then back to the rack, and the rack it comes back to is not always the one it left. Three shifts touch the same items and nobody records the handover, because recording it means walking to an office and writing in a register.
Then a job is held up because a fixture cannot be found. Somebody remembers seeing it on the night shift, somebody else thinks it went out for repair, and after two hours of searching a replacement is ordered. Nobody was careless; there was simply never a record of who had it last. The cost is not the tool, it is the line standing still and the duplicate purchase that follows.
2. How ASTITVAAMS Handles It
A rollout usually takes a few weeks for a single tool room, longer if you have several plants. Four things do most of the work:
A tag that survives the shop floor
Etched or industrial QR labels for most items, RFID for tools handled with gloves or covered in coolant. Each tag links to the purchase record it arrived on.
Issue and return on a phone
The storekeeper scans the tool and the person taking it. No terminal, no paperwork, and it works in a basement tool crib with no signal.
Shift handover both sides sign
At changeover, anything still out is listed. The outgoing holder and the incoming one each confirm, so a gap shows up the same shift rather than a week later.
Posted into the system you already run
Values and asset numbers go back to SAP or Tally, so finance is not maintaining a second list by hand.
You stop searching for tools, because ASTITVAAMS records the last person to hold each one rather than leaving it to memory. Losses do not vanish into "somebody must have moved it", and the argument at shift change becomes a list on a screen.
3. What Changes for You
- ✓Searching stops eating production time: A scan tells you where a die was last confirmed and who has it. Most searches end at the first phone call instead of the third.
- ✓You stop buying replacements you already own: Before a replacement is ordered, the tool room can check whether the original is out on a machine or sitting in another plant.
- ✓Shift changeover becomes a two-minute check: Both shifts see the same list of what is out. Disagreements surface immediately, while the person who had it is still on site.
Take This Away
A PDF covering the tag choices for a shop-floor environment, how issue and return works offline, and what the handover record looks like. Useful for circulating to plant heads and IT.