Avnet, CircuitByte Announce DistiDirect API Connection

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CircuitByte has added “DistiDirect” support for the Avnet group in the latest release of its popular bill-of-materials (BOM) price calculation and purchasing tool. 

The BOM Connector™ from CircuitByte lets users increase the efficiency of their part sourcing and purchasing process by better digitalizing price inquiries. One of the most innovative features, known as “DistiDirect,” provides a direct real-time connection between customer and component supplier, thereby drastically decreasing the time and effort required to check pricing and availability of a wide range of components. Using application programming interface (API) technology, DistiDirect can quickly show pricing, stock levels, packaging options and lead-times for all parts in one or more BOMs. Now this functionality is available for customers of all Avnet “Speedboats,” including Abacus, EBV and Silica. 

According to Kevin Decker-Weiss, Sales Director of CircuitByte: “Our Avnet API connection is the result of a close and highly successful technical cooperation between our development teams. Working together, they have created a very fast, highly reliable connection that provides all the information customers need. In addition to price and availability, the system will provide ECCN and obsolescence information and even a ROHs status. The fact that we were able to connect all the Avnet Speedboats at once represents a major increase in functionality for DistiDirect in our new 8.16 release and will be highly appreciated by our BOM Connector user base. We are very excited about our relationship with a top company like Avnet and look forward to adding new features to meet customer demand.” 

Brian Wilken, Vice President Digital at Avnet EMEA, commented: “API has been on our roadmap for a while, and we offered to some selected customers a standard-API, based on our e-commerce platform. Now, with CircuitByte and BOM Connector, we entered a new phase of connecting to customers automatically through a proven platform. We are pleased that CircuitByte sees us as a real differentiator on information breadth and quality. We look forward to working with them on the next phase.” 

The pricing and delivery information provided through the DistiDirect connection to Avnet are then used by the configurable “BestPrice” function which quickly shows the optimum purchasing/packaging scenario taking account factors specific to the project such as delivery dates, production levels and “surplus” purchasing. The results are stored into a powerful SQL backend database and can easily be reused for similar projects or by other users in the company. The result are drastically reduced quoting times.

As an MES integrator, CircuitByte utilizes the Valor line of manufacturing tools from Siemens to build a holistic solution which generates the data needed to sustain an IoM/Industry 4.0 strategy throughout the entire process.