Would it not be great if a supplier gave you direct access to its storeroom and let you choose the components you required at leisure? What if you could do this from the comfort of your office, with the aid of design, configuration, pricing and application tools?
Festo believes it has redefined the standards of service in the field of fluid and air power control with a new digital approach that will cut costs, turnaround times and component confusion. Digital Customer Information (DKI) system is an innovative concept based on Festo's Digital Product System, which provides a rapid overview of the company's products and technology, with drawings, photographs, dimensioning programs and selection aids. The freely available DKI system's holistic approach allows unrivalled scope and ease of use during product selection - and can regularly be updated by e-mail.
Festo's CD-ROM with its DKI and auxiliary programs for configuration and design means an end to component selection problems. The system consists of scanned printed catalogue pages or PDF files, as well as 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 product images. The system guides them via 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 DKI system 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. Data from these programs may be automatically transferred to the digital system.
After product selection, the digital system continues to provide invaluable assistance: 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 DKI System is also available on the Internet and, in the longer term, 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.
For Festo, an 'integrated' solution means ensuring that the facilities for the electronic handling of business transactions are supported by a user-friendly call-centre service, which can clarify any unresolved commercial or technical questions. This pneumatic automation specialist will continue researching ways of making life easier for its customers.
For more information contact Richard Teagle, managing director, Festo, 011 971 5500, [email protected]
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| www: | www.festo.co.za |
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