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The promise of Industry 4.0 is great news for the adoption of advanced cutting tools. The reason: In interconnected manufacturing systems in which comprehensive data reveal the performance of the system, WNMG Insert the impact of an advanced tool becomes clear.

Jacob Harpaz, president and CEO of IMC, the parent company to cutting tool maker Iscar, repeatedly stressed the connection between Industry 4.0 and cutting tools in a recent day-long series of presentations in which he introduced the many new and upcoming Iscar products to about 600 distributors and other salespeople representing these tools. Iscar organizes an event like this about once every five years, and this year, the move toward data interconnectivity in manufacturing is one the most encouraging developments Mr. Harpaz sees.

Historically, the lack of clarity about manufacturing performance has been the main impediment to shops embracing high-end cutting tools. Tools typically account for just 3 percent of the per-piece production cost of a machined part. However, a High Feed Milling Insert tool's price tag is more visible than its benefits. This fact leaves manufacturers frequently pursuing cost-saving steps that have little impact. For example, at 3 percent of unit cost, finding tooling that is one-third less expensive will only cut the per-piece part cost by 1 percent. Something similar is true of tool life: Even doubling tool life will only cut cost per part by 1.5 percent. However, finding tooling that provides for significantly faster machining or reduced non-cutting time enables each unit of machine and labor time to deliver more parts, likely cutting the cost per piece by 10 or 15 percent.

This argument makes sense in the abstract. The problem is, it can be hard to marshal the data to prove this case as it applies to a specific tool in a specific cut. That is where Industry 4.0 comes in. We are moving into a world in which manufacturing systems increasingly do marshal data such as this, and manufacturers increasingly make use of it.

“The companies that are good at collecting, analyzing and acting on data will be the leaders,” Mr. Harpaz says, and he expects Iscar will serve them via tools able to cut faster or reduce setup, along with inventory systems supporting the aim of 24/7 machining. The company’s “Logiq" product introduction aims at this, and “machine intelligently” is the company’s tagline for this idea.

In his talk to Iscar representatives, Mr. Harpaz spoke for the better part of 10 hours to explain many classes of new cutting tool products—too much to summarize. But here are examples of some of the kinds of tooling that will help manufacturers ready to refine their processes within increasingly data-driven shops: