Zoller TMS

Does anyone here use Zoller's TMS software? Our shop purchased it, and even during training sessions, they struggled to make anything other than a square endmill. Tools like lollipop endmills, no chance. Zoller's products cost a premium, so I'd have expected more from their software, and trainers. If anyone here is using it, how do you feel about it?

I will say, the presetter is top notch. The TMS software is my gripe.

Nobody? Would this question get more traction in another category?

At a former job, we looked at it, then ultimately decided to buy WinTool instead.

Agreed that the Zoller presetters are a wonderful product. Such an awful company to deal with though. Everything is an option, and everything is expensive. We were very worried that the Zoller TMS would have nicked and dimed us out of business.

boosted said:

At a former job, we looked at it, then ultimately decided to buy WinTool instead.

Agreed that the Zoller presetters are a wonderful product. Such an awful company to deal with though. Everything is an option, and everything is expensive. We were very worried that the Zoller TMS would have nicked and dimed us out of business.

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Yes, at this point I'm kind of wishing we had gone with WinTool for TMS, and Zoller for the presetter. Zoller put on a good show at SouthTec, but in practice, I'm just not sure the TMS is a good fit for our shop. How do you like WinTool? Do you have any idea of the approximate cost?

We had some issues with WinTool, but I will say that their team was pretty good to work with, and fairly responsive to our needs (if somewhat slow). I wrote a custom WinTool post to dump presetting programs to our Zoller presetter, and it had about 95% functionality. The Zoller folks said it (WinTool presetting) would never work right, but it took less than two days of real work.

Pricing was comparable IIRC, but again, we had no confidence in Zoller, and sort of assumed that once Zoller TMS was in the door we'd be held ransom for updates, upgrades, missing features, etc...

I will say that in my experience any robust tool management software needs a really capable steward and champion. I never had time to build out our system, and the folks in the crib were not interested or up to the task. In a mid to large size shop, the amount of buy-in required to make it work right is very significant, so much so that unless your consumption is massive, it's really hard to see an ROI.

I'd say our consumption is pretty high. I know that for our tooling distributor, we are their biggest customer. The biggest issue for us, is that building the tool database, and managing it, is entirely up to us, the programmers. (or "engineers" as the idiot management insists on calling us). We don't have areal tool crib, despite a shop of almost 50 machines. We've paid for the Zoller, so we'll try to make it work. I think a lot of it is a matter of weeding out all the "fluff" features in the software that we don't need. I don't care for the VERY european format either. The Din4000 style tool structure. bleh.

Hello!
I am the project leader for our Zoller TMS integration at our company.
So let me know if you have any questions about it! We are very happy with it!