It seems that the pandemic has pushed the business world to digitize faster, and the Machine building industry is no different. But does the promise of digitalization materialize in the real world? Is it making our process faster and smoother?
eProcurement for Technical Parts: Abandoning or digitizing the old process?
Let’s take a closer look at a typical business process in our industry — Purchasing. The tasks for the crews in the procurement departments used to be straightforward but time consuming, “Lay down the 17 parts I need to purchase and find the best suppliers for them”. It means, for each part, sending out emails to some 15 suppliers who you know can produce it, and attach the file — a Technical Drawing. Done! Then in a couple of days, you might luckily receive some quotes to choose from.
Nowadays, with the emerging online manufacturing platforms, there are alternative ways in achieving this same task. The promise is an instant quoting and ordering. Many of those platforms offer you an online interface, a website, to upload your Technical Drawings, STEP/DXF files, and fill in the MaterialaTnd a couple of process-specific specifications. But the workflow might become more complicated than before as you have to actually have all information available to feed the instant quoting engines. So here we are with a typicial trade-off: What would get you further? A fast ordering via an instant-quoting platform like the ones we have seen for sheet metal and CNC parts or the old manual process with a quicker turn around? The only thing I am sure about is, that the old email ping-pong has to either be overcome or strongly modified.
As we have talked about instant-quoting heavily on my blog, lets take a look at the alternative way of digitizing the procurement process for sheet metal parts: One company that stepped into directly automating the existing way of handling RFQ was Werk24, a Munich-based company involved in using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to automate the understanding of Technical Drawings. The company’s technology can comprehend complicated Technical Drawings even from decades ago that are not paired with a 3D model. Their APIs can extract information such as Title Block, Measures, Tightest Tolerances, GD&Ts, and even generating CAD approximations. So rather than finding a new direct way of procurement as most online-manufacturers do, Werk24 is providing a clever solution to digitize the old working process. Or maybe the Technology might even allow online manufacturers to participate in the established working process.
Technically, Werk24 is relying on Computer Vision and Machine Learning to imitate the human reading process. Its reliance on Computer Vision means that the technology can process a wide range of data formats including PDFs and Images. So even your TIFF files might work.
Just like us humans, the Intelligence is using context information to increase robustness. Take the example of a sloppily written measure of length 7. Traditional OCR would be unsure whether to interpret it as ‘1’ or ‘7’. Werk24 uses the drawn length of the measures to differentiate between these possibilities. The team states that their Technology has two personalities: a dynamic personality that is using machine learning to constantly improve itself on the basis of the files that are being processed and a static personality that checks the result for plausibility and makes use of engineering conventions to improve robustness.
Shouldn’t that make it possible that you directly send Technical Drawing-only RFQ to the email of those online platforms as how you do it now with conventional manufactures? Within a minute, you receive an email back with the Quotation and direct ordering option.
“It’s not only procurement, but our technology can also automate almost all existing processes involving Technical Drawings without changing the established way of doing business.” Dr. Jochen Mattes, the CEO of Werk24 told me.
What I found also interesting from other Werk24’s applications are that their AI technology could also be useful for improving day-to-day business of conventional manufactures. If you are busy with dealing with all the incoming RFQs from your mailbox, Werk24 claims to be helpful there by understanding the Technical Drawings and filtering out the RFQs that do not fit your machine specifications. Another typical case could be that you have decades of drawings scanned but piled up in folders on your computer for no purpose, Werk24 can truly digitize them into a searchable repository or even helping you to analyze and train your own pricing model.
And last not to forget, what Werk24 appeals to me is they offer the simplicity of using simple API calls to serve your existing systems. At the same time, they also offer full-range of customization and integration services to make sure their technology is placed into the existing business puzzle to generate value.
The right tool for the right purpose?
So compared to the current trend of instant-quoting and ordering, Werk24’s functionality might be more hidden behind emails. I would see it more of an intelligent support for the sales manager rather than the replacement of the sales manager as most instant-quoting websites are proposing. Especially for recurring tasks which require a lot of manual data handling and analysis this solution might help sales specialists to propose good quotations faster and more accurately as no important data gets lost.
I also think that it is very important to think this from the actual buyer perspective. A procurement specialist might be more interested in keeping the old process and just get a better value proposition by faster feedback and without additional work. From an engineer’s point of view, instant quoting could save him the time of doing the technical drawing as all information is being filled in online anyway. I guess it heavily depends who you are talking to if you are looking for a digital sales channel.
Furthermore, I still think the implementation of technology is more important than its technological basis. If online-manufacturers can provide good prices in a short period of time (not necessarily instantly!) in a convenient way, they will make the race. I am excited to see which concept will make the race (or a combination of both)?
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