A tool room builds the press tools, moulds and gauges other factories use to make their parts. It runs on master toolmakers whose judgement takes a decade to grow and is very hard to replace.
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Share your requirementsA tool room or die shop designs and builds press tools, progressive dies, moulds, gauges and special tooling, and repairs them for customers or for its own production. Work flows from CAD design through milling, wire cutting and surface grinding to hand fitting, assembly and a tryout on a press or moulding machine. Bench fitting and spotting decide whether a die works. Every job is one-off with a long lead time, and correcting a failed tryout is slow and costly. Master toolmakers carry the judgement, apprentices learn beside them for years, and customers want a die back fast when it breaks in production. Related reading: HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in tool rooms and die shops. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A master can judge a punch clearance by eye and touch, and when one retires or resigns the shop cannot hire that skill.
Trainees who reach a good level get better offers from larger firms, so the shop pays for training and others collect.
One die can take months, so daily output targets mean nothing and a performance review turns vague.
A customer's die cracks in production, the shop drops planned work to mend it, and overtime and friction follow.
A flaw found at trial stays with the bench team, so the same flaw returns on the next tool.
Delay in any one of them pushes the whole bench team into late nights before delivery.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Career and Succession Management; Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a tool rooms and die shops business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Steps with named tasks such as grinding a punch, fitting a die set, adjusting clearance and leading a tryout.
Steps with named tasks such as grinding a punch, fitting a die set, adjusting clearance and leading a tryout. Tie pay to it with compensation benchmarking.
A list of skills across the years, a named mentor and a review each quarter.
A list of skills across the years, a named mentor and a review each quarter. The learning and development process can shape it.
Follow it through design release, rough machining, hardening, fitting, tryout and delivery, and review slips with the team.
Follow it through design release, rough machining, hardening, fitting, tryout and delivery, and review slips with the team. See performance management.
A short note on what failed or surprised, shared with designer and bench fitter and filed with the tool record.
A short note on what failed or surprised, shared with designer and bench fitter and filed with the tool record.
Ask what keeps them, what they want to pass on and who should learn it.
Ask what keeps them, what they want to pass on and who should learn it. See succession planning.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Plans for the retirement or exit of the few masters whose skill cannot be bought.
A written apprenticeship path and mentor role that builds skill over the years it needs.
Milestone tracking and review for one-off jobs where daily output means little.
Toolmaker pay checked against firms that would hire your best people.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Offer a clear ladder with pay steps, signed-off skills and a real route to senior roles. A bond rarely works alone, so add a visible future.
Use milestones for each tool, quality at tryout, time against plan and customer feedback. Daily output counts do not suit one-off work.
Start early. List what only they know, pair one or two people on live jobs and consider a part-time or advisory role afterwards, agreed in writing.
Keep a repair crew or a fixed share of hours, and agree priority rules with customers. It protects planned jobs and softens overtime shocks.
Yes. Regular hours with bench fitters and at tryouts show designers what works. Make it routine, not a one-off.
We would list your masters and who could replace them, read apprentice sign-off records and see how tryout lessons get back to design. A fitting opening job is a skill ladder with an apprenticeship plan. Once we have spoken, the scope is agreed in writing.
All 9 business types in CNC machining and precision engineering · Find another business type
Tell us your industry, team size and the issue you want to address. Bring one example of where work gets delayed or ownership is unclear, and the deadline or decision you are working towards.
