Digital catalogue avoids component confusion

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IBG - SA Instrumentation & Control Buyers' Guide

February 2002 News

Festo believes it has redefined the standards of service with a new digital approach that will cut costs, turnaround times and component confusion.

The concept is based on Festo's Digital Product Catalogue, which provides a rapid overview of the company's products and technology, with drawings, photographs, dimensioning programs and selection aids. The Digital Customer Information system's holistic approach makes it unique in its scope and ease of use.

Festo's CD-ROM with its digital catalogue and auxiliary programs for configuration and design means an end to component selection problems. The catalogue consists not merely of scanned printed catalogue pages or PDF files, but of a database-supported selection system that allows users to find products at the click of a mouse. Users can search according to desired technical features, part numbers or simply product images and are guided by the shortest possible route to the products they need. Alternatively, a search can be made via planning and dimensioning tools or of Festo's new products. Suitable accessories can be displayed and selected at the same time to create fully operational modules.

Festo's digital product catalogue helps users even before they select products. If, for example, important design-relevant parameters are not known, this is no problem. A total of seven easy-to-use planning and dimensioning programs can be deployed to determine all the input variables necessary for product selection, from mass moment of inertia values through vacuum suction gripper sizes to the complete simulation of a pneumatic control chain. It is also possible to transfer data from these programs automatically to the digital catalogue.

After product selection, the digital catalogue continues to provide assistance in a unique way. For almost all of Festo's 13 000 components, CAD drawings are available on the CD-ROM in the form of DXF files. Photographs, technical data and much more can be transferred directly, reliably and quickly to other programs and used for design, sourcing and documentation purposes.

Taking the concept further, Festo's Digital Product Catalogue is also available on the Internet and the company plans to offer all its customers who are interested in this way of working an opportunity to use an integrated electronic system to handle all their business transactions with Festo.

This will mean that price information will be available on-line, as well as product availability and the ability to manage delivery dates on-line, with confirmations of orders and order status reports. If customers wish, they will also be able to receive invoices and make payments on-line. This entire concept has been designed as an extranet solution.

This integrated solution ensures that the facilities for the electronic handling of business transactions are supported by a user-friendly call-centre service that can clarify any unresolved commercial or technical questions.

Festo

(011) 971 5500

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