Xometry announced several interesting new features at their recent summit event.
Xometry is the leading manufacturing network, providing a variety of making services, including 3D printing, to clients worldwide. The “Manufacturing On Demand” concept involves users uploading design files and dispatching them to appropriate regional service providers. Currently, their services including waterjet cutting, sheet metal bending, injection molding, urethane casting, CNC milling, laser cutting and 3D printing.
I say they are the “leading” player in this space because they are at the top of our weekly 3D print company leaderboard that tracks publicly traded companies in the 3D print space.
What’s new? Plenty.
The company recently acquired Thomasnet, a large source for connecting to equipment and materials providers. This move, announced last December, provided Xometry with a service that complements their previous capabilities by connecting with a huge range of materials and parts providers.
Xometry announced their new “Industrial Buying Engine”, which is how they integrate Thomasnet function into their operations. They explain:
“The Industrial Buying Engine, which helps enterprise customers source and purchase from the more than 500,000 top suppliers on Thomasnet.com. It digitizes the old and time-consuming request-for-quote process, condensing to just hours or minutes what once took days and weeks to complete. Through the Industrial Buying Engine, enterprise buyers can request quotes for products and services from trusted, high-value suppliers and they can also access the Xometry Instant Quoting Engine for more immediate transactions. Additionally, buyers can start a conversation with suppliers directly on Thomasnet.com, and suppliers can instantly submit quotes and accept projects.”
Xometry also announced something called “Workcenter”. This is a single view of Xometry (and non-Xometry) activities, that includes project management, payments, job board, financial services and more.
The Workcenter also allows users to create their own workflows for manufacturing processes that thread their way through and beyond Xometry. They explain:
“With Workcenter, shop owners can build and manage workflows for all their projects, including those from non-Xometry customers; quote new projects from Xometry and Thomas; assign tasks to team members and track the status of projects. Workcenter is robust and yet flexible enough to help small- and medium manufacturers make the much-needed leap to digital. Workcenter also helps suppliers take advantage of expedited payment terms so they can continue to expand.”
The Industrial Buying Workcenter and Workcenter are available for use now, at no charge to users.
I’m particularly interested in the Workcenter concept, because it is tying together various services within the Xometry umbrella and provides a single point of activity for suppliers on the Xometry network.
The Workcenter provides a platform on which Xometry might be easily able to add even more function from future acquisitions.
We can see from the Leaderboard that Xometry now has considerable resources; they can leverage their huge capitalization to perform many useful acquisitions right away. It will be fascinating to see where they turn next to enhance their offering.
Via Xometry
