New media rich RFQ system lowers costs

United Kingdom – Have you ever heard the phrase “a picture paints a thousand words”? Well that is exactly what happens when suppliers are presented with clear illustrations of products, components, sub-assemblies and specifications. But what if the picture you offered your suppliers in your documents and quotation requests went a stage further and included fully interactive three dimensional and two dimensional elevation views and the documentation also pulled technical specifications, notes and care points from your enterprise-wide systems? Well Theorem Solutions Publish 3D for Purchasing does just that.

Publish 3D for Purchasing allows anyone in the purchasing department (with adequate permissions) to publish media rich RFQs with imbedded 3D CAD models automatically. That is a game-changer in its own right but what makes this software application more incredible is the fact that can extract costing information, technical specifications, briefing notes and in fact any information held in a folder or database in the organisation. The icing on the cake is any supplier with a tablet or pc will be able to view, mark-up and interrogate the document (including the embedded 3D CAD models) without having to purchase specialist CAD viewer software. By providing media rich information in combination with fully interactive 3D CAD assemblies, costs can be driven down and errors avoided.

Theorem’s Publish 3D for Purchasing empowers purchasing departments to easily create and share RFQ documents (and engineering change documentation) containing pre-populated forms and interactive 3D data published directly from native CAD data held on PLM systems. The published and fully interactive 3D model is contained within an automatically generated PDF and can be viewed and interrogated by suppliers using the freely available Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Publish 3D for Purchasing includes custom built templates designed specifically around the purchasing department’s procedures to pre-configure and automate the RFQ process. This saves valuable time and reduces costly human errors.

The documents can be annotated and additional rich media such as PowerPoint files, video, hyperlinks to additional online information and spreadsheet data can be auto-embedded, or inserted manually. The PDF can also act as a carrier vessel (like a .zip file) to transport additional files, for example native CAD data, purchasing documentation or statistical process control documentation. With a little help from Theorem Solutions, the template can be fully customised to align perfectly with any procedures to help the department with customer conformance and company compliance.

Publish 3D for Purchasing will also manage workflows and batch routines to utilise available hardware and CAD licenses overnight and then present the published files back to Purchasing for approval before automatically sending to supplier distribution lists via email, ftp or cloud-based collaboration systems. One document populated by rich and highly visual information, distributed automatically.

Test drive an example 3D PDF purchasing document.

Source: Theorem Solutions