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Historically evolved decentral organisation structures led to suboptimal implemented improvement measures by neglecting comprehensive dependencies within the tool life cycle. Cost saving measures in one life cycle process can manifest as performance deficits in others, for instance the interdependencies of low priced cutting tools and the resulting quality loss within the cutting tool operation. Therefore, a life cycle-orientated indicator is necessary to support the holistic evaluation of planned or implemented measures and their impact towards the entire tool life cycle system.

The complexity and number of variants of today's cutting tools is constantly growing due to the customer-specific requirements.

A model to track the cutting usage has been developed. The application domain of the model is milling in the woodwork industry. The model involves the capturing of raw data from three different sources; the machine tool control, the Enterprise-Resource-Planning system and the tool management system. The data is analysed, the cutting distance is calculated and stored along with the data of the tool usage parameter settings. In order to predict the remaining tool life it is essential to know the actual tool usage. The usage is based on the tool life distance which is calculated by the movement data of the axis and various parameters of the numerical control system. Input for the calculation is the cutting path, the tool usage data and the end of life due to tool wear. With this information it is possible to forecast the estimated tool life by using machine learning algorithms. This forecast algorithm will predict more accurate results after each learning cycle. The developed model has been implemented as a smart service. The tool wear predictions are used for improvement of machine availability. Tool changes can be done in advance of large orders and machining can be operated with less supervision. Furthermore the shipping of tools between the manufacturers, the customer and the refurbishment can be optimised. Premature wear due to wrong settings or human error can be avoided. The system ensures a reliable exchange of information without paper work via the internet across company boarders for the whole life cycle of each tool.

Für die prozessintegrierte Regelung von Fertigungsprozessen steht eine Vielzahl von Messverfahren zur Verfügung. Ein möglicher Ansatz ist die „In-situ“-Integration der Messtechnik in der Werkzeugmaschine. Dies verkürzt den Informationsaustausch zwischen der Messung und der Fertigung und reduziert die Nebenzeiten des Prozesses. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchungen war, ein „In-situ“-Integrationskonzept am Beispiel einer Getriebefertigung monetär zu bewerten. Die Ergebnisse der Kostenanalyse zeigen, dass der Einsatz des „In-situ“-Integrationskonzepts in unterschiedlichen Szenarien innerhalb der Fertigung zu monetären Vorteilen führen kann.