Data Acquisition Process with ToolLink
Gathering product data from suppliers is a time-consuming and tedious process that puts pressure on the relationship between you and your suppliers. Although companies try to benefit from international data standards and to involve their suppliers into the enrichment process, success is limited due to various reasons.
Data Acquisition Process Today
To ease this process CIMSOURCE provides ToolLink, a supplier portal which allow suppliers of any size to add or update data directly into a system. To improve the experience even more, ToolLink places the clean up & enrichment process into the hands of the suppliers and provides a way to validate product information before it is send to your company. This means that you will not have to deal with information that is not accurately provided according to company standards.
Any tool supplier that receives a ToolLink request from it’s customer
Tool User and ToolLink
owner, the single company that consumes the tools and operates the ToolLink system
Log-in screen for logging on to ToolLink in a separate area. Privacy mechanisms ensure that each supplier can only see it’s own data.
The data shall be supplied in standard data format StOB (a harmonization of DIN, ISO and other standards). Suppliers not familiar with DIN or ISO are guided with an interactive input wizzard. Data entry may be entered and/or edited with guidance from the user interface. Mass data processing via Excel is also possible.
The supplier can decide whether he wants to provide the maintained data „only“ for ToolLink of the respective customer or also for the public ToolsUnited database.
The supplier can update, supplement or amend its data at any time. For each data record (tool item) ToolLink tracks the change history.
Manage supplier contact information, including pre-defined email texts for efficient communication.
Upload function for Excel files with the required tool items (gross demand). ToolLink matches the data requests with the content of ToolsUnited. Items that are not found in the ToolsUnited database or do not meet the quality requirements are subject to sourcing (net demand) from the respective suppliers.
For non-standard tools (tools that may not be specified using DIN or ISO properties), the geometric data is requested in standard formats (STEP; DXF) and checked for conformity with DIN/ISO.
Keeps track of data requests and deliveries. Open and closed requests are shown, the status of requests in progress is managed.
A data checker checks the data for consistency using the quality guidelines specified by the user. 2D and 3D graphics are also checked. In case the requirements are not met, ToolLink rejects the data record. The respective supplier receives an error log and a guideline what needs to be amended to pass the quality gate.
ToolLink provides standard rule sets to import data according to DIN/ISO and specific rule sets like for Zoller TMS. Any requirement that goes beyond the scope of these rule sets may by specified using the rule editor.
CIMSOURCE
CIMSOURCE’s standards and technologies are key to synchronize the master data management of tool suppliers and the manufacturing data management of tool consumers.
Since developing Standard Open Base (StOB) in 1992, CIMSOURCE has been organizing the product databases of tool suppliers, and the tool data of manufacturing operations.
