One-stop sourcing of the latest interface material technologies
Keeping supplier bases to a manageable size is important to procurement professionals – being unable to consolidate with a limited number of suppliers has management, cost and convenience implications. But this need can cause friction between the procurement and design functions within a business with design engineers keen to have access to the widest choice and latest options in order to make their products the best they can be, leading not following, and differentiated from the competition.
Broadline distributors can be a source of a huge range of part numbers – often into the hundreds of thousands, but as volumes increase distributor prices can become prohibitive, and for custom parts such as pads and gaskets in specialist materials, broadliners are not an option for design engineers.
Materials Direct not only supplies custom parts in volumes ranging from prototype to full production, but also offers them in a wide and diverse range of materials. These can be to provide a simple gasket, insulator, a thermal interface (with or without electrical isolation) or RFI shielding.
With materials from leading brands such 3M, DuPont, Laird, Berquist and many more, the designer is spoilt for choice and can accurately match a material to application needs. With such a wide choice, it’s important that a website offers comprehensive information presented with continuity and in an easy to navigate way so that site visitors can work their way quickly to the solution they need. Materials Direct does this by employing a helpful filter with check boxes that narrow the choice down. Once the ideal material has been highlighted, live information on current stock levels can be seen and then the order process can be initiated straight on the product page.
Choice, speed and ease-of-use, and high availability are cornerstones of a successful, modern self-service, transactional website. Materials Direct has taken all of the best ideas from many of the leading consumer websites we are all familiar with in our lives away from work and brought them to the B2B engineering world.
