At our facility the vending machine was a dirty word for a long time, me included. We didn't like the looks of Integration companies getting a foot hold and mark-ups on what I consider low services, (vending machine, stocking labor) but we needed inventory control, signout control, usage control. We kept with our one major and local distributor for perishable tooling. This was important since they know our needs and help us engineer tooling needs, like having an extra project engineer. We shared what the integration companies proposed with the distributor, what consignment costs would be, and any other add-ons that would come with their service. Our distributor was more than happy to keep our business, placed 4 vending machines in the plant, (90% of our perishable turns) stock the machines, and invoice us once a week. Vending machines themselves can be rather inexpensive in the big picture, it's the inventory and who is carrying that cost that breaks deals. There is no secret that consignment has a cost, whether it's worth the cost is where the road of opinions split. For us that had little value, we purchase and the distributor stocks the machine, manages our turns to not over stock or run us out. They even breakdown our insert packs, so a pack of 10 turning inserts is stocked in the machine as a pack of 2, most milling inserts as packs of 7. We can now run reports to discipline our operators, take only what is needed for the day, no toolbox stashes. We can also roll-up perishable tooling cost by specific job, or which operators use more tools than another running the same job. The vending machine can be as simple or all encompassing as you want. We have barcodes on employee badges and our job packets for the part number and the operation number. From there any report can be made and manipulate in Excel for meaning to your shop.
Our spend is now controlled, inventory is in check, less paperwork is being handled, our buyer is freed up to work more magic, and most importantly, the distributor is invested even more in our success without finger pointing when a machine is waiting for a tool, or rushing something in. It really was a win for both sides, and saved vendor and customer money and stress.