From Tooling to Engineering Services

The objective of EuroTooling 21 is to change tool manufacturing from a resource driven process to a knowledge driven process. This will reposition mouldmakers as key strategic partners in complex industrial value chains. In the drive to achieve this goal, 33 partners have joined forces in an Integrated Project funded by the European Commission in the period from 2004 - 2008. The project consortium has identified three Case Studies (CS) to meet the specific industrial requirements in sectors of strategic importance:


Moulds for high volume advanced injection moulded parts;

Tools for precision and micro tooling;

Moulds for small batches of high variety injection moulded products.


Concrete Reference Products


In these CS, tooling companies and their OEM end users develop, implement and validate new technologies and business processes on the basis of concrete reference products. The technological developments required, take place in Research Areas (RA). These cover the entire tool life cycle, from part and tool design to extended services, such as tool repair and recycling. In a further step, the validated results from the CS and RA are transferred to a much wider section of industry via a dissemination and training programme.

Improved Value, Reduced Resources and Time

During and after this project, the European tooling industry will be in a position to increase its competitiveness through:


Improved value, as perceived by the client (i.e. turnover per product, service included);

Reduced consumption of resources (i.e. number of production steps, operating hours per machine);

Reduced time (i.e. throughput time, machine utilisation).