Paperless Parts Launches Wingman™, the Company’s New AI-Powered Automation Tool to Make Quoting from Prints Faster and Less Error-Prone

The Company will showcase its Wingman AI functionality at IMTS 2024.

September 5, 2024

Boston, MA — Paperless Parts, the leading quoting and collaboration solution for custom part manufacturers, today announced the launch of Paperless Parts Wingman™, its new AI-powered automation tool to make quoting from prints faster, more efficient, and less error-prone. Their team will demonstrate the new features at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago next week.

Paperless Parts Wingman is powered by a proprietary, secure AI model developed to extract critical information from quote packages—including emails, prints, and models—so that estimators can work faster, automate administrative aspects of setting up quotes, and minimize the risk of missing important details. Paperless Parts first introduced AI assistance in its platform in early 2024, allowing users to extract metadata and key details, including part number, drawing number, revision, description, and RFQ received date. Today’s launch builds on that functionality and includes the ability to automatically extract new critical details from prints.

Specifically, the software is now equipped to identify key features most likely to drive costing and pricing considerations, including:

  • Specs (ASTM, MIL, AMS, NADCAP): Identify and extract over 10,000 ASTM, AMS, MIL-SPEC, NADCAP, and OEM-specific process/material specifications.
  • Threads (UTS, metric): Identify thread specifications that may indicate taps, inserts, or other hardware.
  • Processes (keyword-based): Identify common process keywords such as anodizing, welding, and heat treating that may require additional operations.
  • CUI/ITAR: Detect if anywhere on the print includes the words “CUI,” “ITAR,” or “Export Controlled” to ensure files are marked and handled appropriately.
  • Materials: Automatically extract materials from prints or metadata found within CAD files to predict the corresponding Paperless Parts material record.
  • GD&T (Coming Soon): Extract Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing symbols to quickly identify features that drive costs and introduce risk.

With Wingman, Paperless Parts can quickly surface critical details in prints that drive estimators’ decision process, such as:

  • “Should I no-quote this item?”
  • “Do I need to tag in a more experienced colleague to estimate this part?”
  • “Is this a highly complex part that I should bake in extra margin to cover my downside?”
  • “Does this part require an outside vendor?”
  • “Will I require specific material certifications?”

“We’re just scratching the surface of what AI can do to de-risk the quoting process for shops,” said Scott Sawyer, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Paperless Parts. “When shops miss a critical detail on a print, it can cause them to under-quote and ultimately lose money on a job. Our goal with the technology we’re building is that estimators never miss those critical details.”

Paperless Parts’ approach to AI supports customers adhering to the most stringent security requirements. “While we see AI as an incredibly powerful unlock for manufacturing, shops need to be hyper-sensitive to how different companies are training and deploying AI models,” explained Jason Luce, Paperless Parts’ Chief Technology Officer. “Any shop that works with CUI or cares about the security of their data needs to be certain that the cloud service providers they’re working with meet the FedRAMP Moderate standard and are not exposing them to compliance risk.”

For information on Paperless Parts’ approach to AI, including the company’s CMMC compliance efforts, visit their website here.

Paperless Parts will also preview new features at IMTS designed to accelerate the building of a Manufacturing Bill of Materials (BOM) from prints. Today, that process is most commonly performed in Excel, takes hours or days to complete, and ultimately requires manual data entry into multiple systems, such as an ERP. Paperless Parts will preview its new BOM Builder, which mirrors the flexibility of Excel but eliminates the need to re-enter data into an ERP once a job has been awarded.

“So much of estimating is a translation problem, where experienced estimators are forced to translate low-fidelity 2D drawings of complex 3D objects into the required raw materials, the process for making the parts, and the time associated with that process,” says Jason Ray, Co-Founder and CEO of Paperless Parts. “Because of how complicated this can be, a focus of our company has been to do whatever we can to raise the fidelity of the information shops have to work with.”

For a custom demonstration of these new features, visit the Paperless Parts team at booth #133268​​ at IMTS from September 9th through 14th.

About Paperless Parts
Paperless Parts is the #1 quoting and collaboration software in manufacturing. The company’s patented technology helps shops streamline the complexity of quoting by managing every step of the quoting process in a single, centralized environment. Our automated costing and pricing logic is customized to your shop, making generating consistent quotes across your estimating team faster and easier. Built to meet rigorous FedRAMP and CMMC requirements, Paperless Parts’ robust tools level up how shops communicate with buyers and empower them to deliver an unparalleled customer experience. Ultimately, Paperless Parts users gain valuable time back in their days, increase profitability, generate more revenue, and improve customer satisfaction. For more information about Paperless Parts, visit www.paperlessparts.com.

Media Contact
Alison MacDonald
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