Good Times, Baseball and Product Configuration Management

At CADENAS PARTsolutions, we’re always looking for an opportunity to get together and show some love to our loyal customers. So when the idea came up for a MVP Industry Appreciation event at a Wrigley Field luxury rooftop suite, we knew we were in for a good time.

You couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day with sunny skies, 77 degrees and a light breeze off of Lake Michigan. We kicked off the event starting at 11 a.m., with a round of short presentations from some of our most valued partners. Following the presentations,  lunch was served including a choice of a steakhouse style buffet or traditional ballpark fare (hot dogs, brats, authentic Chicago-Style Italian-Beef sandwiches with all the toppings and more!) Manufacturing folks got to enjoy drinks and network before heading  up to the roof-top seating to watch the Chicago Cubs play the Pittsburgh Pirates.

A big thanks to all our presenters for sharing their sales & marketing successes they’ve achieved with PARTsolutions. Here’s a summary of their presentations:

Multiple Formats, Changing Technologies – No worries
Ken Massett, Vice President of Marketing at Smalley Steel Ring

By offering CAD downloads to their registered users, Smalley is able to build their sales and marketing lead database while ensuring the customer gets the right part every time. Using PARTsolutions product configurator, Smalley enables engineers to get instant access to configurable CAD models in over 150 native CAD formats. Ken shared one huge advantage Smalley has from working with PARTsolutions is that he doesn’t have to be concerned with changing software or CAD formats, because he knows CADENAS PARTsolutions has it covered.

Trillions of Configurable Parts
Chris Blaszczyk, Product Development Manager at Misumi

Chris showed off Misumi’s product configuration management solution which is completely integrated with their e-commerce shopping cart including pricing, lead time and shipping data. Misumi has one of the world’s largest component parts product catalogs with over 95 billion product variations per page. With over  2000 pages in their catalog, the PARTsolutions online configurator is able to generate models on-the-fly for the trillions of products produced by Misumi. Chris shared that PARTsolutions was the only vendor that could handle this complex volume of data. Misumi is now generating over 1.4 million CAD files every month.

Tom Wood presenting the Bimba product configuration management solution

You usually only hear from people when they’re ticked-off, not here!
Tom Wood, Marketing Manager at Bimba

Tom demonstrated a few of the keys to success for their online catalog and product configurator. Bimba is one of the first adopters of CADENAS PARTsolutions PART2cad feature, which allows full functionality, movement, mates and constraints for downloaded CAD parts. This enables engineers “try-out” the part in their CAD system before they buy, ensuring the right fit the first time. Additionally, the streamlined, embedded interface and vast selection within the Bimba catalog has driven web traffic and built a remarkable customer experience, resulting in a wave of positive feedback from web visitors. Tom pointed out that in most businesses, you only hear the negative feedback. That’s not the case with our PARTsolutions configurator. It’s been all positive he said.

Thanks to everyone who came out to our MVP Industry Appreciation Event. If you missed us this year, hopefully you’ll get a chance to join us at our next event.