With the development of intelligent manufacturing industry, the function of tool management system is steadily broadened for diversified demands of customers. Aiming at taking the entire chain of cutting tool after process design, which incorporates selection, purchasing, usage and scrape, into consideration, this paper presents an intelligent manufacturing tool management system (IMTMS) for cutting tool-flow monitoring, and achieves of advantages of digitization, networking, intelligence and visualization for whole life-cycle management of cutting tool. In view of the complexity and low reliability of current available tool condition monitoring technologies, an indirect tool residual life prediction methodology is proposed based on the surface roughness of the workpiece in engineering applications. The IMTMS has been demonstrated of good performance by insitu tests.