Tool Room

Collection of tools from the 1980s to now. The first spreadsheet tab covers over 14000 tagged tools (1 to 19000 with gaps) and totals over 3.2 million dollars in initial cost. The second spreadsheet tab covers over 2100 EIO tags. The total initial cost for the listed EIO tags (with gaps) is over 6.1 million dollars.

Part of this data was collected from the Babbage server after the Aticts software stopped working. Only segments of the data were extracted from the Babbage server. In some cases, the data was broken up and spread over multiple columns. Efforts were made to join these pieces back together, but the accuracy of the information can sometimes be questioned for this reason alone. The rest of the data comes from multiple spreadsheets that were used to record tools after the Aticts program crashed (roughly after 2005).

If the tool was over 2000 dollars, it was also entered into the EIO system (OASIS) and given an EIO tag. Most tool room tools are also in AiM. Almost all of the shop tools under 2000 dollars (most of the tags 1 to 19000) are not currently in a software program/database, only in spreadsheet form.

Many of the old shop names saved in Aticts were different from the current shop names. Also, many of the employees who had tools assigned to them with Aticts don't work at UW anymore. In addition, there are tools missing from the list either because they couldn't be extracted from Aticts, or more recently if they were never entered into a spreadsheet. Sometimes the information was simply lost, and that's why there are gaps on both spreadsheets. The last roughly 300 newest entries from Health Sciences are not in the spreadsheet yet because they're still only on paper. Despite these negative issues, credit needs to be given to Joel Brewer and Rufino Isip for keeping the information up to date, and for also preserving the data despite the limited resources available.

Rather than assume where or who the tool is assigned to now, we'd prefer to update the information as soon as we can confirm that the tool exists, which shop it's currently in, and who it's assigned to. Also, we would like to know about any tool that is not listed here.

Click the link and login (with a UW NetId) in order to view and comment on the sheets.

On a side note, there's a possible benefit (besides tracking the tools) to using shared tool data like this. Maybe we could eliminate unnecessary duplicate buying in some cases, if an employee finds a tool that they can borrow in another shop.

Manuals for some of the tool room tools.

Tool procedures for tool attendants and tool users.