Why 2019 will be the year of the Manufacturing Platform?

Understand why this trend has become the headline of Forbes magazine.

Do you remember what it was like to order a pizza a few years ago?

First, you chose the taste, called the pizza shop and made the request, informed your data and began to wait. At some point of time, someone in your family would ask you if the pizza was coming soon and you had to call the pizza shop to retrieve an update about your order. The store attendant reported that some ingredient runs out of stock during the pizza preparing, but this had already been bought and your pizza was already on the way to your home.

A short time later the delivery guy would call you to see if he was in the right place. When you arrived to meet him, you gave him the money, and he gave you several coins and change notes. Everything in your pocket, it's time to get the pizza on the table to start dinner. That friend of yours who did not like onion was upset because his pizza pieces came with onions mixed to the cheese, so you decide to call the pizza place to let them know what happened.

We are happy to know that now asking for the same pizza in a delivery app is a lot easier. The price of the pizza is automatically charged from your credit card, the restaurant ratings are written by real people like you and you feel secure to make the decision of choosing the right restaurant, the whole process of cooking and delivery is digital and you can see it all in real time, with no need to talk to anyone.

All this is thanks to digital food delivery platforms. Such platforms are emerging in various markets and now the turn of manufacturing has come. In Brazil, Peerdustry Shared Manufacturing is the largest on-demand machining platform.

But how can this kind of platform work in the manufacturing industry?

You may have encountered difficulties in the process of purchasing machined parts made to order from a technical drawing for use in your plant, maintenance, assembly devices, line tooling, jigs, fixtures or other applications.

First, you open your technical drawing, start a new email, and put your all three suppliers in blind carbon copy. In the body of the email, you describe what you need the determined amount of parts, desired delivery time, place of delivery, the term of payment among other information. Now just send the email and wait for answers.

Two days passed and you had no return. You decide to call the suppliers and ask for special attention in your quote. On your first call, you are answered by the staff who informs you that the price quote responsible is on the field and will only be able to answer you the next day. On the second call, the owner of the company answers and informs that he did not answer his quotation because his machining equipment does not support the tolerance of the part described in the technical drawing. On your third call, you find out that the vendor has picked up a very large service for a new company that is being installed in the region and will not be able to attend you. Even so, the owner advises that if you really need it, it can quote as a matter of urgency in emergency character. You discard because you understand that you will receive an expensive price, the famous "quoting a high price to lose".

You come back and understand that in the best scenario, you will only receive a single quote, so you open the search system on the internet and search for machining and tooling companies next to you. When calling the first, the supplier informs that only works with serial parts, high volume, which is not your case. And every supplier you call, a new declining situation arises and so it happens until you realize that within two hours you have called more than 8 suppliers and they all do appear not to deliver you the quote you need.

Here comes an idea: is this part worth all this time spent? Its price may be irrelevant to a labor-intensive purchase job. So, you decide to wait for the first quote from the first vendor and then make an exception in the compliance system, stating that you have no other quote for this part and its value does not justify developing new suppliers. Once you receive the quote from that single vendor, you open a spreadsheet, place the vendor's negative response motives, and submit this file to the buying process.

But, can the supplier be more efficient?

It is worth practicing empathy and looking at the same process from the supplier’s point of view.

You are a company with your own customer portfolio. Often you, the owner, runs the role of the salesman but also solves the day to day routine in the personnel department, financial, quality, purchases and so on. You receive an email requesting a quotation with an attached drawing. As you are in the car going to the accounting office to solve some problem in a tax, you leave the email as unread. When you arrive at your company, as soon as you step out of the car, your production manager calls you to evaluate a technical question in a drawing of a part being manufactured. This ends up taking the rest of the few business hours you have left. The next day you open the email with the request for quotation and see that you do not have suppliers to that raw material described in the technical drawing. To solve this, you need to send the work to your friend's company who only works with kind of raw material. A few days later you receive the quotation from him, you open your email and search for the last conversation with the customer's quotation request. When you find it, open your business proposal template, do the pricing and attach it in the e-mail.

A few days go by and you decide to call the customer to see if the price and manufacturing deadline is within his expectation and if there is a purchase forecast for this part later this month. The call is made in vain, the phone calls are not answered within more than 15 minutes of trying. You decide to open your email and send a request for feedback. The days go by and you end up forgetting this quote because you did not have the customer's feedback.

Technology has come to increase process efficiency through new business models.

Imagine now that you access a platform on the internet, enter your customer area, upload the technical drawing, fill out details of payment method and shipping and click on request quotation. Since you need the quote within three days, you indicate this deadline for quotation.

On the desired date, you receive an email informing you that your quote is available at the platform.

When accessing the platform, you search for the quotation, you evaluate the price that is within your expectation and simply clicks on buying the piece. Within the desired time, the part is produced according to the technical drawing and arrives at your company and you install immediately in your plant and return to produce and make money.

The platform selects suppliers that meet technical and business requirements. Machine dimensions, location, access to raw material, type of tolerance, desired quality standards and other information are used for selection of potential suppliers. The selected suppliers receive the request for quotation on the platform and evaluate if they have the availability and the interest to quote at that moment. They open the drawing, evaluate and type the price and conditions and click the submit button. Once the customer buys the part, confirmation of purchase automatically arrives, and the supplier begins to manufacture the part. Within the agreed time you deliver the part to the Platform Distribution Center and the customer will be serviced quickly. Now you go back to the platform to get more services of your specialty in the moment of idleness that you have and realize that you just won a digital salesperson. Now that it has become clearer how manufacturing platforms like Peerdustry are revolutionizing the market, continue to understand why 2019 will be the year of manufacturing platforms in the next article coming soon.