Stopped at a job shop in Akron last month and their tool crib setup made me rethink mine
I was picking up a rush order of aluminum plate from a small shop over in Akron last month and while the guy was loading me out I got a look at how they run their tool crib. Everything was on a shadow board right at the machine, not back in a cage, and each station had their own set of the ten tools they actually touched every shift. The foreman said since they switched over about eight months ago their setup time dropped by roughly 3 minutes a part, which adds up fast when you're running hundreds of parts. What got me was they tagged every holder with a little colored dot by job family, so you can see at a glance which ones get used together. I went back and tried a dumbed down version at my own bench, just a pegboard with the stuff I grab nonstop, and honestly I've stopped walking to the toolbox as much. Nobody there seemed to think it was a big deal, it was just how they did things. Anybody here run a shadow board setup at their machine, or does management keep everything locked up where you work?