3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace – Beyond Amazon?

Last year I asked in one of my articles – Is PLM business Amazon Proof?  If you run a business, the question many companies are asking today is simply – Am I Amazon-proof? What are safety zones from future Amazon interest and development. It appears actually, PLM companies are trying to get into Amazon business zone – for selling and buying parts and services.

The idea of selling and buying parts and manufacturing services isn’t really new. If you familiar with the topic, you know MFG.COM, which was founded almost 20 years ago and accepted investment from Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions and other investors.

MFG.com is a global online manufacturing marketplace that connects buyers of custom manufactured parts with manufacturers and job shops that provide of contract manufacturing services. Buyers (who are typically engineers, industrial designers, and other sourcing professionals) are able to post requests for quote (RFQs) to the marketplace and then receive quotes from qualified contract manufacturers located around the world.

For the last few years, I can see a growing number of website focusing on what is called “One click manufacturing”. This is what I wrote few years ago about it:

One click manufacturing (OCM) is a concept that arose from the 3D printing world: design a 3D model of a part, upload it to an OCM company like Shapeways or Ponoko, click “build,” and wait for the physical object to be delivered to your door. Now, OCM is making inroads into the more traditional electronic manufacturing and assembly world. You can upload a PCB design and a bill of materials, and receive assembled boards on your doorstep. This capability, combined with the rise of startups building IoT devices, has far-reaching implications for the electronic component supply chain.

Manufacturing is under going tremendous transformation process. Build to order, speed and engagement with consumer are most important competitive factors. The challenge for manufacturing companies is to lower cost of products. At the same time, customers’ demand is mass-customization, which potentially increasing the cost. The speed of one click manufacturing process can change value chain economics and change the way companies will organize manufacturing processes.

First time, I wrote about 3DEXPERIENCE earlier this year at Solidworks World 2018. Check my blog about DS Big Dreams.

Last week, at 3DEXPERIENCE forum in Boston, I captured another  piece of information about DS Markepalce ideas and products. Here are few screenshots that can give you an idea about 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace:

Take a look on the following videos I captured.

This one is about 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace Community Version:

And this one is about 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace Enterprise Version

You can see, that community version is more advanced and the process is clearer. However, I can see lot of potential in enterprise version as well. The process of manufacturing presented in Marketplace is still heavily focus on manufacturing of a single part. This is where it all starts. But, I can see even bigger advantages of applying same ideas if manufacturing assemblies, managing contract manufacturing and more complex relationships.

What is my conclusion? DS indeed has big dreams about how to turn around business models and connect manufacturing companies and engineering bureaus with potential buyers of their work and other companies selling part and services. Like famous investor Peter Thiel likes to say – svaluable technology companies aren’t the ones claiming “first,” they are the ones claiming “last.” It is a fascinating process of business transformation in manufacturing. The ideas of industrial renaissance are great and they can take DS to future spiral of development, investment and acquisitions of technologies connecting manufacturing across the globe. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Disclaimer2: DS provided some meals, but didn’t influence the content of the articles.