Fastenal — No. 5 on Industrial Distribution's 2019 Big 50 List — announced this week that it is rolling out its new Product Locator application aimed to provide customers with cost savings. The Winona, MN based fastener, industrial products and vending solutions distributor said the Product Locator allows for simple or refined product searched based on either location or part.
Fastenal sees the new technology as a way for customers to stop spending time looking for parts. Instead, with Product Locator, the company said anyone in a shop can walk up to a touchscreen, do a search and know exactly where to find what they need.
"Every minute spent hunting through drawers and bins is time you can’t use to finish your work," said James Self, Fastenal’s director of sales for metalworking. "This is a game-changer. This takes our best dispensing device for cutting tools and makes it interactive and user-friendly."
Fastenal's Product Locator offers two different search options. First, when you know the exact part you need, you can search by location to find where it's stored. You can also search for products by general attributes like just the category of tool, the manufacturer's name, or by part number.Fastenal
Initially, Fastenal's Product Locator application is being paired with the company's FAST10K drawer-only vending device. Once installed, it can be used to find parts across many devices within a facility or under an account. The company said it believes this process will help customers drive efficiency and help shops with lots of parts that live in these drawers. Fastenal mentioned CNC operators, anyone working in the metal-removal world or anyone building out a job sheet or job change of examples of those who would benefit from the application.
"You don’t have to flip through a binder or read labels to find your part,” Self said. “You just use the touchscreen to search by part number, type of part, or really any piece of information you know about whatever part you’re looking for."
Fastenal said it is past the testing phase and is now offering the Product Locator application to both current and potential customers.
