An e-catalog allows SMC Corp.of America to efficiently present its complex product line to manufacturing customers.

By Alicia Orr Suman

SMC devised a request for proposal and sent it to five vendors. “Three responded with proposals, two of which we liked enough to do site visits. We had a list of 30 to 40 criteria we were looking for, including price, of course, but more importantly things like being able to maintain our own data.”

SMC chose SolidWorks in Concord, Mass., for its expertise in working with configurable CAD files. And it selected TechniCon, an Emeryville, Calif.-based Web catalog solutions firm experienced in creating online industrial catalogs with validation parameters and selection criteria that would work with SMC’s products. If possible, SMC asked, could they create a project team by bringing the two vendor companies together? The answer was “yes.”