Abstract

The processing industry has to find ways to reduce manufacturing costs, as a way to survive in the market with increasing competition. This competition has become increasingly driven by globalization, that is, an industry has to share the consumer market with other industries that are installed worldwide. One of the possible ways to reduce manufacturing costs is related to the efficient use of basic inputs. Among the main inputs used in the manufacture, some are specifically related to the tools that are installed on machines such as lathes, grinding machines, presses and others. Typically, the tools developed by the industry in the process engineering sector have dedicated characteristics that must be maintained to perform the appropriate transformation of the product being manufactured. The preservation of these characteristics is linked mainly with the specified service life for the use of each tool, in order to make the substitution before the product is affected by non conformities arising from the manufacturing process. The tool replacement at the right time becomes essential, but to perform this task should be considered aspects related to the early and late replacement, both of which can lead to increased costs for the purchase of tools or rework parts produced with different characteristics what was envisaged in the specification. In this context, this paper proposes a graphical interface to be integrated into the physical architecture of the automated system that makes managing the use of tools for industrial eccentric press. All virtual components designed for the windows of the graphical interface are significant and related to the procedures set out to make the replacement of each of the press tool. The validation of the functionality of the interface is obtained by means of tests on the prototype that adopts the basic elements provided in said architecture. The positive results observed in practical tests suggest that graphical interface is appropriate