BOSTON (Oct. 3, 4:45 p.m. EDT) — PartQuoteMedical, an online business-to-business marketplace for precision medical-device components developed by PrecisionMatters Inc. of San Francisco, was unveiled Sept. 27-28 at OEMBoston.
"We qualified every supplier, created a profile, whether they are RFD-registered or ISO 9002, and checked if they could do the work. We visited every plant to make sure they are who they say they are," Bill Malecki, president and chief executive officer of PrecisionMatters, said at the show.
He said more than 100 suppliers and 100 buyers have registered for the site, which has been in beta testing since June. The site is the answer to problems Malecki said he encountered in 12 years of working in product development as a biomedical engineer.
"With more than 7,000 manufacturers and 14,000 job-shop suppliers in the United States alone, matching up buyers and suppliers is currently akin to finding a needle in a haystack. I developed PartQuoteMedical so that it uses the Internet to streamline the process, saving everyone time, money and frustration," he said in a release.
Malecki said the site evolved from his work designing parts for minimally invasive surgery. To make a clamp, Malecki found he needed 26 pieces from 12 different suppliers.
"One (supplier) choked at the 11th hour and the result was a four-week delay," he said.
The experience led him to believe that there must be a better way, and that´s why he turned to the Internet. The site does not hide the identities of buyers and suppliers.
"We encourage them to talk," said Malecki, noting that a question can be answered quickly at the site for all participants or just one.
PartQuoteMedical will collect a commission on the completed purchase order when the supplier is paid.
The site, www.partquotemedical.com, is aimed at engineers, original equipment manufacturers and job-shop suppliers. According to the company, more than $8 billion is spent manufacturing medical devices each year; at least 50 percent of the parts used are plastic, Malecki said.
PartQuoteMedical is the first product offered by PrecisionMatters Inc., which was founded in 1999.