The market pressure and the products of competitors are decreasing the duration of product life cycles. Besides that, special customer requirements and rising product complexity result in an increase of the effort and the costs of the development process. In order to minimize the effort of the development process as well as to handle the uncertainties which come along with the planning and selection of manufacturing systems a data-based configuration tool was developed for the use in the field of sheet metal forming. Based on the product data of existing press systems, the tool is able to predict the fundamental configuration of a newly developed press system. The utilization and functionality of the tool is illustrated on two exemplary press systems.