Towards new collaboration practices in the European tooling industry

One of the advantages for the European tooling industry today is the close geographical proximity between toolmakers and end-users, which enables quick responses to changes and the co-development of products, processes and tools. However, to benefit from this advantage and to provide more added-value services to the end-user a symbiotic relationship between toolmakers, their supply chain and their end users is necessary. In this paper the authors describe selected levers to improve the collaboration in the toolmaking value-chain, which have been identified through interviews with toolmakers, their suppliers and their customers. These results are used to explore new business opportunities for European toolmakers.