Tool and die maker
They are skilled artisans (craftspeople) who typically learn their trade through a combination of academic coursework and with substantial period of on-the-job training that is functionally an apprenticeship.
Since the advent of computing in the manufacturing fields (including CNC, CAD, CAM, and other computer-aided technologies), tool and die makers have increasingly added IT skills to their daily work.
Today's employment relationships often differ in name and detail from the traditional arrangement of an apprenticeship, and the terms "apprentice" and "journeyman" are not always used, but the idea of a period of years of on-the-job training leading to mastery of the field still applies.
Jig/fixture makers gain hands on practical experience while monitoring and making alterations as the manufacturing process is constantly improved and reviewed with/by engineering.
Properly built jigs and fixtures reduce waste by ensuring perfectly fitting parts.
Jigs, fixtures and gages are needed to maintain quality standards for repeated low and high volume production demands.
A broader use of the term includes reference to a space where tools are made, repaired, inventoried, and/or distributed for use within the factory.
Examples of such division of labor had existed in prior centuries, but most manufacturing had been done on a craft basis, where there had been no need for the idea of a toolroom separate from the rest of the workshop.
In engineering and manufacturing, a toolroom is everything related to tool-and-die facilities and methods, in contrast to the factory floor and production line activity.
For people not familiar with these fields, in order to understand the specialist usage, some explanation is needed: Within the general field of machining there is a rough but recurring division between (a) toolroom practice and (b) production practice (the making of large numbers of duplicate parts).
Anecdotal examples of similar distinctions can probably be found here and there throughout human history, but as a widespread part of the "fabric" of material culture, this distinction (and the terminology with which to talk about it) has evolved since the Industrial Revolution, and most especially since the advent of armory practice and later mass production.
A good, simplistic way to summarize the change in ideas is to compare the making of a certain product in different time periods.
When only a small batch of output is demanded, will one (a) produce each piece using "custom" methods (handcrafting or toolroom-style layout and machining), which drives up unit cost; or (b) maintain the capital-cost-intensive toolroom-production division, which also drives up unit costs in its own ways?
For example, CNC and robotics have led the way to rapid prototyping and instant manufacturing, which shift the toolroom-production division by giving an up-front toolroom investment the flexibility to be quickly and easily used for any product design, with batch size irrelevant.
